It might have been the first event under the monicker ‘London Day of Nature’ (LDN), but the ideas discussed at Camley Street Natural Park on Saturday 28th October 2023 were far from rudimentary…
GiGL Life
Interview, Lyndsey Cox
It’s a small thing but I actually really love engaging with new recorders. Providing help, information and encouragement, knowing that an engagement with nature is the first step on a lifelong journey…
Joy of Recording: Tom Fitton
Whatever the sector may be, whether it be the environment, healthcare, or something else, data is the evidence-base from which all decisions are made. I, therefore, feel that as a person with such a huge passion for the natural world, reporting what I find is a must.
Summer editorial Issue 33
The variety of articles in the GiGLer’s 33rd Issue reflects our vibrant community and all the amazing work being done to understand and protect nature in our capital…
Joy of Recording – Lesnes Abbey Woods
Lesnes Abbey Woods, Bexley, is a hidden treasure in the heart of suburban London…In this Joy of Recording article we hear from 2 fantastic volunteers, Charles and Andrew, who give up their time every month to walk these transects and then send the resulting records to GiGL…We also hear from Ian Holt, the wood’s Estate Manager, on how he works with GiGL to use those records to help understand and protect the site and educate others.
Volunteer Update
Since our first AWI volunteers joined the programme we have been able to develop the variety of projects we offer, with our species data entry and data maintenance projects kicking off at the start of 2023…
Ancient Woodland Inventory Volunteers
Though coming from different backgrounds and skillsets, our volunteers have been united by a love of the environment, especially of London’s ancient woodlands, and a desire to conserve it….I hope you enjoy getting to know them as much as I have…
Interview, Nick White
I find nature’s resilience in the face of all we do to it very inspiring. Little things, like a lone ‘weed’ forcing its way up through a crack in a concrete path or a bush that has managed somehow to self-seed in the mortar on a wall I find quite amazing….
Interview, Cam Witten
I see LERCs playing a vital role as both stewards and educators. The data and the places we look after are so much more than the sum of their parts. They’re the lifeblood of a greener, healthier, and happier London, and a London that is doing its bit to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss…
Winter editorial Issue 32
We hope all of our readers have had a fantastic, happy and healthy 2022. After a year of highs and lows, and not just in terms of temperature, I hope you can join us in looking forward to 2023 with a hopeful optimism and appreciation of our wild city that has so many people dedicated to its conservation…
Interview: Molly Williams
…I’ve found a great way to learn about the natural environment, and keep it interesting, is to try to get some good photographs of local nature and wildlife. When you set yourself that goal of trying to get a good snap of something, you can learn a lot about it, for example, its location, the time of day or year it appears as well as what it looks like in detail. All of this can be very useful, not only for your own ecological knowledge but also for recording of species in London…
London Recorders Day 2022
From migrating eels and faecal shields to ‘full frontal newtity’ and figwort weevils, the London recording community continue to find inspiration and joy in everything natural, weird and wonderful.
Interview: Becky Garden
Professional species identification skills can take years to learn, but some people don’t realise you don’t have to be an expert to enjoy it, take part, and make a difference.
Interview: Digby Wheeler
I grew up with access to nature and open spaces and encouragement from others to engage with the outside world in a positive manner. It’s only since growing up that I’ve realised how lucky I was – and still am – to have this relationship with the natural world …”
Celebrating our Verifiers: Neil Anderson
One of the best things about GiGL is the exchange of data where both parties gain; I verify records to remove erroneous identifications or confirm rare sightings, and gain new records in return….
Issue 31: Summer editorial
After a busy start to the New Year, GiGL have been forging ahead with our work as London’s Environmental Record Centre. If you’ve been keeping up with our monthly articles you’ll already know we’ve been working away at a huge range of topics in 2022…
Celebrating our Verifiers: Leslie Williams
Butterfly records are made by a large community of Londoners, often volunteering their time. And to all of you, thank you…As a verifier I have a small role in checking the data inputs to help ensure the quality of the data and of the outputs…Most people probably do not set out to become ‘verifiers’, but the role can evolve from experience…
Celebrating our Verifiers: Derek Crawley
The greatest benefit of working with GiGL is that we have up to date, verified records that can be shared. This is important both to monitor trends in the population but also to ensure they are represented in planning developments…
Joy of Recording: Dave Clark
I might like playing with numbers and dataset type thingies, yet despite my best efforts to digitalise and enumerate it`s nature`s unpredictability which is the real draw …
The Royal Society of Biology London Branch Launches “BALCONY WATCH”
With the ever-greater changes in our natural world, leading to increasing threats to biodiversity and habitat loss, we feel that there is no better time to show people the wonders that exist in their own inner-city spaces and how they can feel empowered to make a positive difference “one balcony at a time” …
Introducing GiGL’s new POSAoD maps
In June 2021, GiGL’s Database Officer Amy introduced you to the updates we’ve been making to our Areas of Deficiency (AoD) models, starting with Areas of Deficiency in Access to Nature (SINCAoD). Now it is the turn of GiGL’s Areas of Deficiency in Access to Public Open Space (POSAoD) maps, which will be released to our SLA partners in April as part of GiGL’s Data Exchange.
Interview: Becca Jordan
Environmental data is the foundation of making good decisions about how we use our spaces, especially in a city like London, so it’s vital that this data is high-quality and reliably-sourced. It feels good to know that I’m contributing to this process while also learning more about the different habitats and spaces in London as I go …
Interview: Victoria Kleanthous
Patterns and trends can only be drawn out by having access to well-maintained and curated data, an important service LERCs provide around the country. I’m proud to act as a custodian of some of this data on behalf of GiGL and everyone that we work with …
Issue 30: Winter Editorial
It might be an understatement to say that it has been a busy year for us, which you can probably tell if you’ve been keeping up with our monthly GiGLer articles. We’ve had to say some sad farewells but have also welcomed many new GiGLers, with no less than six new arrivals! In this winter edition of the GiGLer editorial I am delighted to introduce all of our amazing new team members, and I’ve also got some fantastic GiGL achievements to share …
London Recorders Day 2021
Though it has been a long time since we last met, the atmosphere at London Recorders Day (LRD) 2021 was that of a reunion of old friends, united by a shared passion for recording, studying and protecting the wondrous nature of Greater London …
Interview, Frankie Moorman
I joined GiGL in September as an Ancient Woodland Inventory Officer and am tasked with ensuring that we have a robust and accurate record of all ancient woodlands in the capital. This means that no matter their size, these valuable and irreplaceable habitats will receive the protection they deserve. It will be exciting to see how the AWI Update project develops over the upcoming year and my role with it ….
Book Review: “Making Urban Nature Bloom: Four Years of Partnering for Nature-based solutions Across Europe” by ICLEI EUROPE
With the populations of cities growing all the time and the world facing unprecedented climate and biodiversity crises, urban nature has a critical role to play in supporting a sustainable planet. Nature-based solutions offer a tool for addressing the multiple environmental, social and economic challenges faced by cities that can also contribute to mitigating the environmental crises more widely …
Interview, Aman Jethwa
The biggest opportunity is that organisations are looking to become more environmentally sustainable. GiGL fit in brilliantly to share data on this. The challenge will be how GiGL can reach and communicate with these organisations to find out what data would be useful for supporting them …
GiGL in full colour: our first public facing annual report
Part of our commitment as a community interest company (CIC) is to submit our annual accounts and a completed CIC34 form, to Companies House. The form includes sections to demonstrate how our activities have benefited the community we were set up to serve, and whether we have consulted our stakeholders and acted on their feedback. We have a series of standard metrics to illustrate these points drawn from our social media accounts, internal monitoring spreadsheets and various other stats-rich resources. What the mandatory reporting doesn’t do is show GiGL in full colour…
GiGL is Closed Week
Like most organisations, we often find we have a list of things we’d like to do on a ‘rainy day’. But sometimes that rainy day never comes. A solution we’ve found helpful at GiGL is to have a dedicated “Closed Week” every six months…
Interview, Jo Heisse
People who aren’t afraid to be themselves and challenge prejudice are inspiring. I currently work mainly in diversity and inclusion and get to meet and work with truly inspiring people who are doing just that. From championing transgender rights, to challenging our gender binary world, to better understanding living with disabilities or mental health conditions, to challenging racism or gender bias. They genuinely inspire me…
Interview, Tanvi Desai
Seeing the Bosco Verticale in Milan really inspired me to start thinking about the imaginative ways that green can be added to urban environments. The experience encouraged me to take on an MSc in Environment and Sustainability, where I focussed on the value and potential of London’s small green spaces (particularly the patches of grass around buildings). I learnt a lot about the many environmental, social, medical and economic benefits of urban greenspace…
Interview, Amy Palmer-Newton
Amy is one of GiGL’s Database Officers. She delivers work to review, manage and develop GiGL’s SINCs and habitat databases. This includes collating data in partnership with local authorities and land managers, and coordinating steering from stakeholders. She also maintains information and models predicted changes relating to areas of deficiency in access to nature…
Business as usual
The last few months have been anything but usual. Whilst COVID-19 has brought about previously unforeseen changes to our daily-lives, GiGL is proud that we’ve been able to maintain as much of a standard service to our stakeholders as possible…
Joy of Recording: Bedfont Lakes – the volunteers assisting an ecological transformation
Bedfont Lakes is a 72.5 hectare country park on the edge of Greater London, and one of the best birdwatching sites in the southwest of the capital. Its size rivals that of Greenwich Park and Wandsworth Common. Yet, when I mention it among Londoner friends and colleagues, no one’s ever heard of it…
Interview, Julie Cox
Julie is one of GiGL’s Partnership Officers. She delivers work for existing GiGL partners with Service Level Agreements. She is Commissioning Editor of the GiGLer newsletter and co-ordinates our SLA Spotlight bulletin for existing and potential SLA partners…
GiGL and Social Impact
Anyone familiar with our strategic plan knows that our vision is that ‘London’s natural environment is appreciated, understood, considered and improved’, but how do we monitor and evaluate our services and identify the outcomes and impact of our work? Can we demonstrate that London’s human inhabitants are benefiting from our work too?..
Book Review: The Meaning of Birds
Written with a warm affection for our avian friends, the book reminds you of all the reasons you too love birds, and puts dozens of familiar and new facts at the forefront of your mind. Barnes is a birder and a story teller, and this book is an entertaining reminder of why observing and interacting with birds is such an important and enduring part of human experience…
Interview, Andy Foy
Andy is GiGL’s Systems Manager. He manages the development and maintenance of GiGL data systems and tools. Andy works with the team to streamline data processes and ensure that GiGL datasets are fit for purpose for use by partners, community groups and the public…
It takes a team to create a report
GiGL’s flagship report, the ecological desktop study, presents a snapshot of the GiGL Partnership’s knowledge of a site or an area. The report is the culmination of a lot of time and effort to collate information about the whole of London; so we wanted to lift the lid on the process of what goes into creating this report…
London Recorders’ Day 2019
On 2nd November, natural historians, conservationists, educators and data managers of London came together once more; we left the grey skies and wet streets of west London and entered that towering cathedral to nature, the Natural History Museum, for the second annual London Recorders’ Day. GiGL, the Field Studies Council (FSC) Biolinks Project and the Natural History Museum Angela Marmot Centre for UK Biodiversity co-organised and hosted this event following the success of last year. The varied talks and displays discussed the joy of studying nature, skills and careers, diversity and inclusiveness, and the use of biological records in practice…
A Sense of Place: The history of the geographical information in the London Natural History Society records
Place has been an integral part of natural history observations from the very beginning. Authors have described the natural history of their parish, their town or their county often in great detail. But the systematic recording of place to give an account of distribution is much more recent…
Book Review: “The London Garden Book A-Z” by Abigail Willis
This book is, more or less, what it says on the cover, an A to Z of London’s Gardens, but with various quirks. As well as listing the gardens that you would expect to find – the sort that would appear as individual sites in our open space database – this book has entries for gardens and types of gardening that are more abstract or dispersed, such as “Guerrilla Gardener”, “Front Gardens” and “Topiary”…
Interview, Eleni Foui
Eleni is GiGL’s Planning Research Officer. She leads on a project designed to understand and support the planning process regarding the use of biodiversity data in Greater London. Eleni will be spending the next 12 months identifying current practices across the capital, defining best practice and developing new resources for Local Planning Authorities…
Joy of Recording: How the skylarks on Warren Farm taught me how to sing
“…Like a rocket, the bird shot straight up into the air from the ground. Momentarily hovering before jauntily flying in a large oval shape. Singing like it had accordions for lungs, a warble so beautiful and so loud and then, just before it plummeted to the ground like it had forgotten how to fly, it let out a repeated single note that sounded like the kind of noises my brother and I used to make when firing water pistols at each other. Pew Pew Pew! “It’s a skylark.” I said, tying up the poo bag, my rescue dog grinning up at me. And on we walked…
Interview, Benjamin Town
Ben is GiGL’s Community Officer. He delivers work for community partners and clients. This includes work for members of the public and community groups, as well as carrying out work with students that wish to use GiGL data for research projects…
Interview, Laura Kuurne
Laura is GiGL’s Database Officer. She delivers work to review, develop and maintain GiGL’s datasets of the capital’s Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs) and their citations, open spaces, and habitats…
Joy of Recording
…I returned to the UK in 2011, moving into a house boat on a wharf at the junction of the rivers Brent and Thames. One day, while working on a small patch of garden on the wharf’s bank, I noticed a tiny little snail that I hadn’t previously encountered; after making enquiries around the neighbourhood, my landlord told me it was a Thames two-lipped snail (Balea biplicata)…
Book Review: “Wonderland” by Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss
Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss are names you will have come across if you watch or listen to any BBC wildlife programmes or radio series. They are household names in the BBC Natural History Unit when it comes to British wildlife…
Interview, Jon Riley
GiGL’s Board of Directors are central to our work and our success. Their commitment and expertise helps guide GiGL and keeps us moving forward and developing. Directors are on the front line of biodiversity and open space work in the capital. They are GiGL service users and contribute to our data banks, as well as serving as ambassadors for GiGL….