Data collation and presentation for a Histon & Impington Nature Recovery Plan
Background
In the Histon Neighbourhood Plan the Histon & Impington Parish Council commits to “Project 12” to:
Work with residents to identify and catalogue the biodiversity within the community and to identify options, through community actions and influencing development proposals (including the Village Design Guide), to enrich species diversity and population levels.
To deliver this project the Parish Council, in collaboration with others, including Histon and Impington Green Spaces (HIGS), proposes to deliver a Nature Recovery Strategy using the toolkit developed by Natural Cambridgeshire Doubling-Nature_Local-nature-recovery-toolkit.pdf (naturalcambridgeshire.org.uk).
This contract is proposed to help deliver the first stage of this project which is to use existing data to catalogue and map the biodiversity within the community (Stage 1 in the toolkit). A workshop would then bring the community together to define the options for enriching biodiversity and objectives for the Nature Recovery Strategy (Stage 2) in the toolkit.
Detailed specification
With regards to the identification and cataloguing of biodiversity in the Parish, a simple approach would be to download data and create maps from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Environmental Records Centre (CPERC) supplemented by a basic habitat mapping. However, we have good reason to assume there is a lot of biodiversity data held in the village which is not uploaded to this database. It is therefore hoped there can be some additional effort in this exercise to capture this data and provide an enhanced starting point for defining biodiversity priorities and to develop monitoring efforts. This would include:
- Downloading and examining status of HIPC data in CPERC database compared to what we know/suspect exists
- Working with HIGS and other village networks to identify other sources of data and facilitate uploading of this data into the CPERC and/or other database Identify the best platform to use for collation of records and ongoing monitoring (CPERC is what the developers use and so there are advantages in data being in there, but other platforms such as IRecord or BirdTrack provide a much more user friendly option)
- Produce a set of maps and spreadsheets identifying species/habitats from collated data
- Attending a PC meeting or workshop to demonstrating and explaining the findings.
Support available
The post holder will have an appointed supervisor and have support available from a project team consisting of Parish Councillors and representatives of local environment groups, including for identifying likely sources of data and facilitating contacts and to help validate any disputed data.
Reimbursement
This contract would suit an intern or recent graduate, or a consultant willing to offer the equivalent consultancy rate. Duration and work pattern is flexible and will be discussed with the applicant.
Expressions of Interest
If you are interested in this opportunity please contact Councillor Sarah Smith at Histon & Impington Parish Council sarah.smith@hisimp-pc.gov.uk for an informal discussion