Biodiversity data for woodland applications:The development of abespoke service

摘要

The changes in forest grant support in recent years, arising in part from the Mackinnon Report (Mackinnon, 2016), have put more onus on the woodland owner and manager to build up a full picture of any area before submitting an application. A key element of this, especially for woodland creation, is to understand what is known about the biodiversity of the area. Although the Local Environmental Records Centre (LERC) is identified by Scottish Forestry in the Supporting Information it provides for Woodland Creation (Forestry Commission Scotland, 2018) as a potential source of biodiversity information, there was little advice on how this would work in practice. This article describes the development of a bespoke service to address this need in one LERCarea.