Biological Records in Essex partnership

Essex has long been in need of a properly funded and staffed biological records centre, to provide biological data, expertise and independent advice to support planners, conservation bodies and naturalists in the county. As the major holder, through our County Recorders, of accessible and reliable non-bird biological data in the county, the Club has been involved in discussions for the development of the Biological Records in Essex (BRIE) partnership since its inception.

The Essex Field Club datasearch system allows to you obtain specialist species datasearch reports. Reports are provided as downloadable pdf documents with a spreadsheet csv file option and are customised to an area of your choosing.  Please see our Datasearch Terms of Service page for full details. Once you start a request, you can save changes at any time and return to complete this later. We can currently provide access to 5,930,331 records for 15,469 species. (see summary for more details).

A crucial element of the system is to ensure that the recorders on the ground, the County Recorders, the Club and its partners all benefit from the systems in place. It is also essential that County Recorders and specialist groups retain control over the data they collate and manage, to ensure their continuing integrity and scientific value.

In July 2011 our system was demonstrated to the Biological Records In Essex (BRIE) Steering Group with a view to its use to provide data on behalf of the partnership, but after many years the partnership was eventually formally dissolved by a unanimous decision of all partners on 16th May 2013.