Biodiversity Action Recording System

The Biodiversity Action Recording System (BARS) is a national website that enables everyone involved in the implementation of biodiversity action plans to record progress towards biodiversity delivery.

The Northumberland BAP has been inputted onto this system and all partners are encouraged to enter information on their contributions towards the delivery of specific targets and actions.

As an example, the Northumberland BAP has identified a target to…

increase the extent of native broadleaved woodland in Northumberland by 1,000 hectares through new woodland creation by 2015

Whenever an organisation creates new native woodland in the county they will be able to record the area of new woodland on BARS. The total amount of new woodland created will automatically have been calculated and the partnership will be able to identify whether it has achieved its target of 1,000 hectares by 2015.

This system relies on recording information in a quantitative format such as the number of hectares of woodland or the number of breeding pairs of barn owls. This is why it is so important to have baseline figures for the area of a particular habitat or the range or population numbers for a particular species in Northumberland. It will then be possible to calculate how much biodiversity we are gaining and also whether we are losing biodiversity in the county.