Species

Several organisations within the Edinburgh Biodiversity Partnership have a focus
on a particular species, or group of species, for their conservation activities. For example:
– Lothian Bat Group
– Lothian and Borders Badger Group
– Lothian Amphibian and Reptile Group
– Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland
– Edinburgh Natural History Society
– Butterfly Conservation Scotland

Other partners, such as Historic Environment Scotland Ranger Service, the Council’s Natural Heritage Service, Scottish Wildlife Trust, The Wildlife Information Centre and Water of Leith Conservation Trust, carry out long-standing and ongoing monitoring of species as part of their activities. Some of these, for example in Holyrood Park, monitor some of our rarest species as part of collaborations such as the Rare Plants project. Much of the species monitoring and conservation work in Edinburgh relies entirely on volunteer effort.

Edinburgh is fortunate to have The Wildlife Information Centre, which holds
records on wildlife for part of central Scotland and for much of south east Scotland.
These records have been generated over many decades, from a variety of sources.
The majority of the information comes from many dedicated volunteer expert
recorders, as well as structured recording schemes which our partners contribute
to. These records allow us to produce a ‘notable species’ list of our rarest species
in Edinburgh. This list is very useful to inform site management, conservation
action and wider decision making on land use. However the list contains several
hundred species, and it is beyond the resources available to the Partnership to
carry out conservation work for all of these