The National Biodiversity Data Centre has built and manages an extensive biodiversity digital infrastructure to meet many of the national biodiversity data management needs. This infrastructure is offered as a shared-service to partner organisations to assist their biodiversity data management needs and to facilitate data mobilisation. This has resulted in a national biodiversity database which at the end of 2023 contains more than six million species occurrence records of almost 18,000 species.
In addition to managing an extensive biodiversity infrastructure and mobilising biodiversity data, the National Biodiversity Data Centre manages a number of thematic work programmes to improve the knowledge on aspects of biodiversity and to promote evidence-based actions. One of these thematic work programmes is management of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan. The Pollinator Plan called for long-term monitoring mechanisms to be put in place in Ireland so that progress in halting wild pollinator decline can be tracked. In response to this the National Biodiversity Data Centre established the Irish Pollinator Monitoring Scheme which is generating detailed information on the status and distribution of pollinator populations. The scheme, funded jointly by Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and National Parks and Wildlife Service, monitors five pollinator groups across a range of semi-natural habitats, farmland, and urban parks, generating detailed information on the status and distribution of pollinator populations. Data generated to data demonstrates that this is a robust and cost-effective way to track changes in Ireland’s pollinators.
Since 2022, the National Biodiversity Data Centre have been collaborating with the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine on a pilot project to test moth monitoring methodologies with Irish farmers. These projects, funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), successfully monitored moths on farms using a farmer-led citizen science approach. Thanks to funding provided by DAFM, the National Biodiversity Data Centre is now establishing a pilot national farmer moth monitoring scheme to roll out this scheme nationally, with a view to tracking how moth populations are changing on farmland. The National Biodiversity Data Centre is seeking to appoint a Farmer Moth Monitoring Officer to have responsibility for delivery of this new monitoring scheme.
Reporting to the Chief Scientific Officer the Farmer Moth Monitoring Officer will have overall responsibility for the development and management of the national Farmer Moth Monitoring Scheme which is to be rolled out by the National Biodiversity Data Centre in 2024.
The closing date for applications is 5pm on Tuesday the 30th of April 2024.
