About
Welcome to our online recording system, Nature Counts.
This page enables you to submit your wildlife sightings to us, to help us make better choices on our nature reserves and beyond, and informing our work in Northumberland, Newcastle & North Tyneside.
This information will help us to get a clearer representation of how our local wildlife is faring. The data collected will also feed into the National Biodiversity Network’s database, the NBN Atlas, meaning your records can be used by ecologists and scientists across the country to inform national policy decisions about nature and the environment, and national assessments of biodiversity.
Whether you’ve seen something common or rare, in one of our nature reserves or elsewhere within Northumberland, Newcastle & North Tyneside, let us know. All species records are welcome. Submit your records to us above!
What makes a species record?
There are four critical pieces of information that are required to make up a species record. If we don’t have the answer to all four of these questions, then the record may not be valid, and won’t be able to be used in future research or decision making. These four pieces of information are:
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What? – What species did you see?
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When? – When did you see this species?
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Who? – Who saw it?
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Where? – Where did you see it?
You may also want to add additional information, like information about individual characteristics including sex or age, behavioural information, or how many individuals you saw. This information is also extremely useful, but it is not essential.
Helping Nature’s Recovery
Your records help us make evidence-based decisions to best support nature’s recovery. We know that Nature needs our help. Knowing what species are found in which locations is essential information for helping staff at Northumberland Wildlife Trust to decide where we need to focus our efforts to help return nature to recovery.
Sharing data with other organisations
Our data is hosted by the Biological Records Centre (BRC) who make our records available under license to national recording schemes, local environmental records centres (LERCs) and researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
Reviewed by experts
Hosting our records with the The biological records centre (BRC) means we have access to the wealth of expertise of iRecord verifiers who can confirm the species identity of records submitted to Nature Counts. Of course, this is in addition to our knowledgeable staff at Northumberland Wildlife Trust!
Published on the NBN Atlas
Our data is regularly published on the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Atlas. This means anyone can see what data we hold, and see how it fits in with the wider world of biological recording.
Built on open-source software
Nature Counts is built using software called Indicia, it’s the same software that iRecord is built upon. Open source means that it’s free to use and extend. Nature Counts wouldn’t be possible without the many organisations that have contributed to its development.
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