FSC BioLinks

Project dates: 2018-2022
Funder: National Lottery Heritage Fund

FSC BioLinks is an exciting project for FSC in the South East and West Midlands, bringing together existing volunteers with skills in biological recording and identification, and new volunteers.

This project provides subsidised training courses, learning opportunities and digital tools focussed on invertebrate identification for anyone involved or interested in biological recording, to build and strengthen the community.

Invertebrates provide us with many useful ecosystem services, like pollination and decomposition, which we cannot survive without but their numbers are declining. Few people know how to identify or record invertebrates meaning there is a lack of data

We are delighted to have been awarded a grant of £1.23 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for this project.

You can also:

• Sign up to receive the latest FSC BioLinks information
• Book on one of our heavily subsidised invertebrate training courses
• Contact the FSC BioLinks team

FSC BioLinks provides courses and resources to support volunteers:

• Species identification workshops focusing on difficult and underrepresented taxa e.g. beetles and earthworms
• Use of and access to high quality resources to help build confidence and knowledge – microscopes and identification guides
• Create schemes to involve volunteers in long term surveys to help provide structured learning and meaningful projects e.g. creating a shield bug atlas for a county

FSC BioLinks supports existing volunteers and encourages new volunteers:

• Use the citizen science BioBlitz approach to engage with individuals and communities who care about their local area
• Help volunteers to look more widely than their initial interest e.g. butterflies to look at plants which feed the butterflies – increase their knowledge and confidence to record and share more widely, helped by new technologies
• Provide volunteers with mentors to help build knowledge and confidence
• Learn to use local, regional and national reference collections and start to build personal collections for reference

Consultation Phase

A public and sector consultation was undertaken during the development phase of the project (funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund) and involved:

• 326 individual responses to the FSC BioLinks online survey
• 11 public consultation workshops attended by a total of 85 participants
• 56 stakeholder consultations, involving 85 different individuals
• 49 responses from site managers to the FSC BioLinks site manager survey
• Read the FSC BioLinks Consultation Report (Jan 2017)

The project will look for opportunities to bring biodiversity training to both South East England and the West Midlands, filling gaps in current provision and adding value to existing schemes by working as a partner with other biodiversity organisations (such as Local Environmental Records Centres, national and local recording schemes and natural history societies).

Read the FSC BioLinks Development Plan For Training Provision (Jan 2018) which has details on how the project aims to bring a comprehensive and detailed structure to the invertebrate groups that will be focused on.

The project application was submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in February 2017 and confirmation of funding was received in July 2017.