Staff changes
There have been a couple of changes to the GiGL team over the summer. Ian Woodward, GiGL’s first Royal Parks Officer has now left to do an MSc. Ian hasn’t escaped GiGL altogether, as he continues to represent the British Trust for Ornithology on our Recorders’ Advisory Group.We wish him all the best with his studies.
We’re pleased to welcome Claudia Watts to our team. Claudia has replaced Ian as GiGL’s Royal Parks Officer and is now working to deliver the 5-year business development plan drawn up with the Royal Parks. Claudia has previously worked for London Borough of Newham and Buglife and is a keen naturalist in her spare time.
Lyndsey Cox, our outposted Data Entry Officer is moving from Glastonbury to Western Australia. Like Ian, Lyndsey won’t be escaping entirely and will still be a key member of the GiGL team– as long as she doesn’t talk about the weather too much.
We’d also like to welcome Chloe Smith, GiGL and London Wildlife Trust’s Garden Research Officer.This partnership project aims to establish the current land-use of front and back gardens, and identify key habitat changes in London gardens over time.The project is funded by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts Mary Smieton Research Grant, and the Greater London Authority. More to follow on this in the next edition of the GiGLer.
Ever-expanding partnership
We’re delighted to welcome Butterfly Conservation’s Herts and Middlesex Group and the London Boroughs of Merton and Havering into the GiGL partnership. Both have signed up since the last edition of the GiGLer was circulated. It’s been a busy summer for data entry.
We have been sent data for inclusion in our database by several organisations, including a number of London boroughs, The Royal Parks, environmental consultants, Buglife, local recorders and groups such as Barn Hill Conservation Group, and London Natural History Society.We are pleased to be in the position to assist voluntary organisations with their data entry too, and have recently helped London Natural History Society with inputting their paper-based regional lichen dataset and moth records for the vice county of Middlesex.
We switched to the most recent version of Recorder this Autumn. Recorder 6 is now our main databse.We have already added a number of datasets since the upgrade was completed.We anticipate reaching a significant milestone before the next edition of the GiGLer comes out. More news on this next time.