Cornish Biodiversity Network  -  Supporting Wildlife Recording

Data Holdings

The Cornish Biodiversity Network's database holds over 3.8 million individual sightings of wildlife, covering 27,600 different plants and animals and grows at an average rate of 200,000 records per year, making Cornwall one of the most productive regions in Britain for recording wildlife, and the most comprehensively and intensively surveyed.

This rapidly growing resource has been made possible by the network of people who share their data with us. They include members of the voluntary recording community, wildlife groups and societies, as well as organisations, like the National Trust, who collect ecological data as part of their normal activities.

This network of dedicated volunteers has built up over decades and owes a lot to the work of the Cornish Biological Records Unit, and in particular Stella Turk, who spent an inordinate amount of time helping and nurturing people with an interest in natural history and laid the foundations for the recording community that thrives today.


Hotspot map showing concentrations of heathland species
Statistics - correct on 01.01.2018 Number of records 2016 Number of records 2017
The total number of biological records 3,602,168 3,813,909
The number of Flowering Plants and Ferns 1,984,441 2,070,922
The number of species, sub-species, etc. 27,186 27,595
The number of people who have provided records 20,494 22,425
The number of published and unpublished sources that have had records extracted 14,881 15,008
The number of wildlife photographs in the database 10,847 11,501


The CBN holds records for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, on land and at sea. 132,408 records are for marine organisms and there are 138,214 records for the Isles of Scilly.



The Cornish Biodiversity Network is pleased to acknowledge support from: