Making use of the wealth of biological, geological and habitat information available at ERCCIS is easy. Once you have decided the location and the perimeter (e.g. 1km, 2km) of your study area and the information of interest, contacted the Wildlife Information Service (WIS).
Once WIS has all your requirements they can offer a wide variety of information products. Normally your information will be in the format of a GIS map of habitat or designation information, a detailed spreadsheet of species in the study area and from 2011 onwards a summary of the notable species found within the study area.
WIS will always aim to provide your information in an easy to understand format, and tailored to the needs of the individual or organisation, so if you have a specific question please ask when making your request. We aim to complete your search as quickly as possible, but it will normally take 15 - 25 days to complete your study. We are a small charity with limited resource so please bear that in mind when planning your study!
If you have any question about the WIS service please contact us.
Alternatively there is the answer to some of the frequently asked questions below;
What does WIS do once you commission a species search? Once you request a species data search WIS will search through over 3,000,000 species records that ERCCIS holds to find the species that have been sighted in your study area. Depending on your requirement WIS will then provide a hard copy and electronic copy of one or all of the following; a spreadsheet list; a pdf list and a GIS map of species sightings in your study area.
Why is the species search list so many pages?
We are very lucky in Cornwall that there are so many excellent recorders and passionate individuals recording wildlife. ERCCIS currently hold more than 3,000,000 plus species records. Of these over 1,900,000 species records have a designation category. As you can imagine this is a lot of information! To try and reduce this into a more manageable dataset WIS (unless otherwise requested) will only supply datasets where the resolution is Tetrad (2 km by 2 km square) or greater and is on the ERCCIS species of concern list.
I have asked for a Notable Species Summary search, what do the abbreviations mean?
In order to condense the huge amounts of biological data ERCCIS hold and to make notable species summary reports as small as possible, your report uses abbreviations.
The list of what these abbreviation mean can be found on the ERCCIS notable species summary document . You can use this document to find the relevant abbreviation, find further details on the legislation or status list of the notable species found in your WIS search.
Where does ERCCIS get its list of species of concern?
Many UK taxa have a conservation “designation” and JNCC has attempted to collate many of the current lists of species designations into one place, this list is known as the SoCC list. The SoCC list is now regularly updated to include the latest UK legislation and species status information, this list is now known as the "species designations" collection rather than the older SoCC list (a published document). More information is available on the JNCC website. ERCCIS uses this list and also includes species that are listed in the Red Data Book for Cornwall to make the species of concern list. For more information on the Red Data Book for Cornwall please visit the ERCCIS publications page.
Why do ERCCIS include all records and not limit searches to the last 10 or 20 years?
ERCCIS will try to supply all available information about a site so that nature conservation organisations, landowners, consultants or statutory bodies can make informed decisions. While the datasets we send out may be very large it is not for ERCCIS to decide what a relevant cut off for a project is and we will provide all the available information unless you request otherwise.
