National Biodiversity Network Conference

The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) is a collaborative partnership created to exchange biodiversity information. The NBN Trust, the charity which oversees and facilitates the development of the Network which has a membership that includes many UK national NGOs, various government and environmental agencies, local environmental records centres and many voluntary groups. It is perhaps best known for their NBN atlas that publishes distribution maps for many species. In November, I had the pleasure of attending the annual NBN conference held in Bristol at the SS Great Britain. A link to all of the presentations can be found here: NBN Conference 2025 - Presentations - National Biodiversity Network). It was my first attendance at this meeting and a particularly good year as it was their 25th anniversary celebration, as well an opportunity to support colleagues at Defra’s plant health exhibition stand.

The meeting began with several overviews of the NBN from its origins and a forward look to ‘NBN 2.0’ and their future. Several speakers talked about the evolution of biological recording, moving from paper records to on-line data submission through a number of recording tools including iNaturalist, iSpot, iRecord and how their data have become increasingly connected and shared.

The next session focused on the value of collecting biodiversity at scale, the importance of data being accessible and integration with each other. There were several references around the theme of ‘People-Data-Action’ and turning ‘Data into Impact’. This then led onto the need to have an agreement on scientific names and the increasing prevalence of DNA for agreeing taxonomy and environmental surveillance (e-DNA).

An excellent talk was given by Dr Ben Holt of the Rockpool Project (https://www.therockpoolproject.co.uk) with some interesting parallels to the Observatree project. Two PhD students from the RENEW team from Exeter University (Emma Squire and Devmini Bandara) gave a fascinating insight into the users of iNaturalist and the need to reach out to a broader community of volunteer recorders (iNaturalist-Survey-2024-NBN-Trust-Question-Summaries-Report-2.pdf). Interestingly 85% of the records come from the top 10% of users. To me, perhaps the ‘unexpected fact of the day’, was that 75% of iNaturalist users who responded did not own a dog, as I had assumed dog walkers, like me, would be a natural fit for recording the different organisms that the see as they are outdoors so much.

In the ‘beyond the now - what’s next’ session, we had several interesting short talks. Defra’s Duncan Allen gave an excellent presentation entitled ‘From observation to action: using iNaturalist to help monitor and elevate plant health awareness in the UK. And it was good to hear Observatree mentioned on several occasions during his talk. iNaturalist is being trialled to capture information on some UK plant pests and this evaluation is ongoing. For now, we kindly ask that cases of suspected tree pests or diseases continue to be reported through TreeAlert.  

Outside of the presentation, there were numerous discussions during at the Plant Health exhibition stand with various other participants. It was great to raise awareness and discuss the importance of non-native plant health pests and diseases recording alongside other native and invasive species.

The final topic was a ‘fireside chat’ with Tom Gray, BBC Head of Nature and NBN’s CEO Gareth Thomas. But sadly, there was no cosy fire! It was fascinating to hear their ‘take’ on positive messaging. The need to tell positive stories to encourage positive actions - the narrative shouldn’t be about shaming audiences and avoiding ‘ecodoom’ (the pessimistic belief that environmental problems like climate change and species extinction point toward an imminent ecological collapse or "doom). There was also discussion about the need to reach ‘new audiences in new ways’. The rise of ‘short format content’ such as TikTok, YouTube Shorts etc was becoming increasingly important for mass audience appeal.

So, a great topic to leave on - an excellent day and so much learnt and to share, connections made and much to reflect on not only for Observatree but across plant health, biosecurity, wider biological recording groups and data collaborators.

Biological Recording Platforms

An excellent summary is available at Record wildlife – a fun way to help nature - National Biodiversity Network.