South Yorkshire landscape partnership wins national award

A South Yorkshire landscape partnership has won a national award for its contribution to recording and safeguarding wildlife in the Dearne Valley.

The Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership (DVLP) scooped the Lynne Farrell Group Award for biological recording in the UK Biological Recording and Information Sharing Awards 2017.

The winners were announced at a ceremony on 16 November during the National Biodiversity Network’s (NBN) annual conference at the National Museum, Cardiff.

The NBN is the UK’s largest partnership for nature, which has been championing the sharing of biological data since 2000. The DVLP beat off strong competition from across the country, to be crowned the winners of the Lynne Farrell award – named after the well-respected botanical tour, expedition and field meetings leader.

The winning project was led on behalf of the DVLP by community officer Roseanna Burton, working in partnership with local naturalist Derek Whiteley and volunteers, and tutors of Sorby Invertebrate Group (SIG) as part of Sorby Natural History Society. Both attended the ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of the DVLP.

Roseanna said: “I was privileged to receive this award on behalf of our fantastic team at the DVLP – it really is testament to all their hard work and that of our community volunteers too. We have been fortunate to work with a wide range of partnership organisations and dedicated volunteers.

“Every year we try to push new boundaries in biological data recording and fill gaps in ecological data. Equally, our aim is to attract new audiences to biological recording and raise the profile of the local area, so we hope by bringing this national award back to the Dearne Valley we will do just that.”

Over the past two years, the DVLP has trained and developed the skills of over 420 local people in wildlife identification and surveying through 35 free training workshops. As a result, volunteers have contributed an estimated 10,000 new biological records into the Local Record Centres (LRC) in the last 24 months.

As well as being recognised nationally by the NBN for biodiversity, the DVLP has been shortlisted in the Community Involvement category at the 2018 LGC Awards. The awards, run by Local Government Chronicle, are the biggest and most prestigious awards ceremony for the local government sector. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 21 March 2018.

The Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership is a five-year scheme, running until June 2019, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project team, based at Elsecar Heritage Centre in Barnsley, South Yorkshire is made of five people working on a range of environmental, heritage and community projects.

For more information on the DVLP, visit: http://ift.tt/2ozmueP

• Photograph shows (left to right): Derek Whiteley, from the Sorby Invertebrate Group, Roseanna Burton, from the DVLP and Michael Hassell, chairman of the National Biodiversity Network.

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