Our Partners and Projects
On this page you will find information about our partners and how your organisation can support and work with us. You can also find out more about the projects we are currently involved in, and some of our recently completed work.
Partners
NEYEDC is committed to building collaborative networks and to partnership working to encourage data sharing, facilitate environmental decision making and drive open innovation in the fields of ecological data capture, management and analysis. We collaborate with some partners to exchange data, knowledge and best practice. We have partners with whom we have developed and delivered projects and there are also partners that benefit from the evidence base that we collate and the data products and services that we make available and support our work through donations and funding.
Become a collaborative partner
PARTNER BENEFITS
To compile a comprehensive biodiversity evidence base for the 14,000 km2 that make up North and East Yorkshire is beyond the scope of any single organisation. NEYEDC relies on the collaboration and co-operation of a wide range of collaborative partners to help collect, manage and analyse data for the surveillance, auditing and monitoring of biodiversity.
Some of these collaborators, like the YNU and its constituent societies, have a long and rich heritage of data collection in Yorkshire and have been generous in their support of NEYEDC. Other partnerships have recently formed around specific landscapes or questions and have led to the development of projects to secure resources and expertise.
NEYEDC welcomes new partners and is always keen to collaborate on new initiatives and projects.
PARTNERS
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland
Garganey Trust
High Batts Nature Reserve
Friends of Hell Wath
Lower Ure Conservation Trust
People’s Trust for Endangered Species
Thorne and Hatfield Moors conservation forum
Trichoptera Recording Scheme
Weevil & Bark Beetle Recording Scheme
Whitby Naturalists Club
Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union
Yorkshire Arboretum
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust
Become a funding partner
Partner benefits
The evolving biodiversity evidence base, managed by NEYEDC, helps some of its donors and funding partners to make informed decisions and remain compliant with a number of legal and policy instruments and, where relevant, fulfil their Statutory Biodiversity Duty. We collaborate closely with our partner organisations and provide a range of data related services tailored to meet their needs. These include:
the provision of ecological data to inform development control and forward planning decision-making
up to date Local Sites information
conducting complex analysis of the data to inform ecological network and ecosystem service assessments
conducting field surveys
digitising data, from existing reports or field survey so that it is available for ecological assessment and analysis.
Examples of specific projects we have delivered for partners are below. If you are interested in becoming a NEYEDC partner, please get in touch. We would love to explore your requirements in more detail.
funding partners
City of York Council
East Riding of Yorkshire Council
Environment Agency
North Yorkshire Council
Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority
Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union
Yorkshire Water Services
Howardian Hills National Landscape
Local Wildlife Site data
We work alongside the North Yorkshire & City of York SINC (Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation) Panel and the East Riding of Yorkshire LWS Panel, holding the site boundaries and species lists for all second-tier sites that have been surveyed. We supply site survey reports, citations and habitat maps for LWSs for these areas.
Nosterfield Nature Reserve, a North Yorkshire SINC, photograph copyright NEYEDC
Projects
NEYEDC is involved in projects, at the national, regional and local level, both leading our own projects and working alongside some of our partner organisations. Our input in projects vary, but often include the co-ordination and management of survey programmes as well as collating, digitising and analysing data collected. The examples below illustrate the variety of projects that NEYEDC have recently worked on.
Yorkshire Waxcaps
NEYEDC’s three-year project from 2022-2024, funded by Yorkshire Water’s Biodiversity Enhancement Programme, to catalogue and survey important fungi-rich grassland sites using both volunteer surveyors and casual WaxcApp recorders. Click on the button below to head over to our dedicated web page to learn more and find out how you can get involved.
DECIDE: Recording nature where it matters
A collaborative project led by the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), the DECIDE project uses adaptive citizen science to steer biological recorders to make observations in high-value areas using the ‘DECIDE Tool’, an online interactive map. New records from these high-value areas will help to fill gaps at the local and national level, ultimately improving biodiversity models for decision-making.
The co-design element of the DECIDE Tool is a big focus of this project, and in 2022 NEYEDC recruited over 20 beginner moth-trappers, provided them with a bucket-style moth trap, training and ongoing support to both learn to identify moths, but also to use the DECIDE Tool to guide where they could most usefully place their traps. The DECIDE Tool has so far been developed for butterflies, day-flying and night-flying moths and is open for anyone to use, both new and existing recorders. Click the button below to take a look for yourself!
To read a summary of our 2022 moth trapping project, read our blog.
NatureHack
It’s an exciting time for ecology. Technologies are being developed that could revolutionise how we survey and monitor our countryside. For example:
Satellites and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are enabling us to map habitats and detect change with fewer resources than ever before.
Acoustic and eDNA techniques open the door to new ways of monitoring species at individual sites and across whole landscapes.
Freely available mapping and modelling software offer new ecological insights and understanding.
There are many good examples of the use of these novel technologies across Yorkshire, but fewer examples of effective roll-out from local or proof of concept use, to wide-spread adoption at the huge number of small sites that provide our wildlife with stepping stones across the landscape. Most of these sites are managed by professional or amateur land managers with very limited resources.
Some have seen these new technologies as a potential alternative to the practice of field natural history, but even a cursory consideration of the challenges that face wildlife and habitats as they adapt to the Anthropocene makes it clear that we will need all the technology and all the traditional field expertise that we can muster in order to monitor the future wildlife of Yorkshire.
NatureHack was NEYEDC’s ‘Resilient Heritage’ project supported by National Lottery Heritage Fund, running from 2018-2020. It successfully explored ways to make new environmental data technologies available to conservationists and land managers across Yorkshire, to improve evidence bases and inform high quality conservation management decisions. Its legacy continues through more recent projects that continue to make recording wildlife more accessible to all.
North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project
The beautiful Turtle Dove is our smallest European dove, but unfortunately Turtle Doves are in big trouble; their population has declined in both the UK and Europe to such an extent there may now be fewer than 100 birds nesting in the whole of Yorkshire. Only 50 years ago it was classed as a fairly common bird.
Using volunteers to conduct annual surveys, this project focussed on where turtle doves have been recorded recently, around the forests of the southern fringes of the North York Moors National Park, to build a better picture of their current distribution. NEYEDC was involved from the start; producing baseline distribution maps, supporting the volunteer surveyors and collating the data generated by the surveys to update the distribution maps.
The Wild Watch
The three-year Wild Watch project carried out the biggest ever systematic survey for wildlife in the Nidderdale AONB. Over 70 target species were selected covering 14 different categories of wildlife, based on various criteria including their national conservation status and bio-indicator species applications, amongst others.
NEYEDC supported Nidderdale AONB in planning the surveys as well as the collation and mapping of the results on an annual basis.
