What's in your garden?
ONE environmental story often doing the rounds is how many species of flower, bird, animal or other organism we have either lost forever, or are very threatened.
Over the last few years, steps have been taken to collect statistics about the biodiversity of local areas in order to build up a picture of the health of the natural environment.
Biodiversity is a useful word for quite a complex idea.
There are many definitions of the word, but essentially it refers to the number of species living in an environment and the overall health of those populations.
In order to counter the perceived threat to the health of the natural environment caused by road building, urban development and agriculture, there are many projects throughout the country aiming to improve the biodiversity of Britain.
How are these projects measured and how do we know whether they are successful?
Believe it or not, there is no substitute for counting.
Although laborious, the only true measure of the state of the natural environment is to count individual organisms.
Throughout the UK, there are groups of volunteers who gather information about individual groups of species, or survey defined areas.
All the local information is fed into the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre.
This information is then used to guide planners, developers and various projects to conserve wildlife throughout the county.
One organisation at the forefront of collecting information about wildlife is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Each year, the RSPB encourages all its members to gather information about garden birds on one weekend.
Now they are taking this idea a stage further and encouraging people to record all wildlife in their gardens during this week, finishing on Sunday.
This information will be used as a "stock take" of the health of certain wildlife species.
Visit www.rspb.org.uk to take part in the survey.
Visit www.sxbrc.org.uk to find out about biodiversity in Sussex.
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Weather for Worthing
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
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Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 3 C to 9 C
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