Welcome to Biodiversity Swindon!

This is the website of the Swindon Biodiversity Partnership.

This website is currently undergoing reconstruction. Please bear with us if any areas are not working, or are out-of-date. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Click on the links above to find out more about biodiversity, biodiversity action planning and what is going on in Swindon.

Latest news from August 2011

New environmental information available about Swindon's Cluster Areas

New maps have been created by Natural England to show what environmental assets you have in your local area. These include Local Nature Reserves, public rights of way and County Wildlife Sites. You can also use the maps to find out how much land in your area is in an agri-environment scheme, and what other biodiversity action has taken place nearby since 2002. Go to the "Get Involved" section of this website to find out more.

2011 is the International Year of Forests!

The Wiltshire and Swindon Biological Records Centre (WSBRC) have produced a woodland species recording pack to promote this event and encourage recording of Wiltshire's woodlands. Go to the latest news page for more information, and to find out about the latest events happening in woodlands near you.

Help us reach 1 million records by 2012!

The WSBRC has set a challenge of achieving one million species records held on its database for the county by April 2012. The target was set to encourage existing recorders to submit their records and to inspire new recorders to have a go at investigating the natural world around them and sharing what they've seen.

As of the beginning of August 2011 the database held over 925,000 records in total so there's still some way to go to reach this ambitious target.

You can help the WSBRC reach their target by sending in your sightings, either to the WSBRC or via the relevant local recording group or County Recorder. All wildlife records are valuable whether they are of common species or a county or UK BAP species.

Find out how to get involved in recording from sending the WSBRC sightings from your back garden to taking part in our International Year of Forests surveys or taking part in a monitoring project or scheme.

Lydiard Park BioBlitz Event

On 4th and 5th June we held our first BioBlitz at Lydiard park, Swindon. More details are available on the latest news page.

Biodiversity Assistants

Our two Biodiversity Assistants, Andy and Tarot have completed their six month placement and have now left the Wildlife Trust. Our newest member, Rebecca has taken over from them and has also been working alongside the Biological Record Centre and completing data entry.

Ten Reasons why Swindon needs a Biodiversity Action Plan

We've created a simple new document showing why Swindon needs a Biodiversity Action Plan. Download it here >

New map of biodiversity related work in Swindon

A new map has been created to show biodiversity work that has happened in Swindon since the lauch of the Swindon BAP in 2005. The map shows all work that has met BAP targets or actions, and we will be keeping it updated. Let us know if we've missed anything off by contacting us using the email box below. Thanks go to Andy Sharp and Tarot Beachus who digitised this map from the paper version.

Download the map (8mb) >
Download the map key>