The Importance of Data-sharing

The Friends of Seething Wells were very grateful for the support they received from London Wildlife Trust and from GiGL who provided information on species recorded at Seething Wells. Juvenile grass snakes recorded during an ecological assessment of the site were evaluated as ‘common’ by the developer’s consultants. Yet records provided by GiGL showed that grass snakes were recorded at only four sites in the borough and that there was a complete absence of any breeding records. An officer from London Wildlife Trust appeared at the inquiry to give evidence of the site’s wildlife value. 

The Trust also enabled a visit to Woodberry Wetlands in Stoke Newington, an LWT managed waterworks site, which showed the practicalities of opening a former Thames Water utility site to members of the public. The information provided by GiGL and by the Trust, certainly assisted the development being refused permission. 

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, none of the data obtained by the developer’s consultants during the suite of surveys carried out between 2010 and 2012 has been submitted to GiGL and is therefore not available to inform future decisions. This information includes the aforementioned breeding record of grass snake, a rare invertebrate species, eleven noctules foraging across the site and the rare Brandt’s bat (one of only five records that exist for this species in the entire GiGL database). see more:London GIGLer

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