Herts Environmental Records Centre Hit Four Million Species Records - Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust

Herts Environmental Records Centre (HERC) who curate biodiversity information for the county have just hit four million records. Read on to discover more about that milestone record and how HERC's data is used to inform decison-making in our everyday lives.

Herts Environmental Records Centre (HERC), who are hosted by Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, have recently hit four million species observation records on their database, with a colourful waxcap mushroom found in a Watford churchyard being the milestone discovery.

HERC curates biodiversity information for the county, managing, collating, and updating comprehensive data on habitats, species, and sites across Hertfordshire. The information is used for local planning, conservation and research, to help users make connections between biodiversity and the world around them.

The record-breaking entry was for Parrot Waxcap Gliophorus psittacinus, also known as Parrot Toadstool, a colourful and eye-catching fungus with bright green, yellow, and orange tones, which give it an almost tropical appearance. The small, slimy waxcap grows in old areas of unimproved and untreated grassland and is vulnerable to habitat loss. The churchyard in Watford where it was found had no previous site or habitat data held by HERC. Submitted through a national churchyard biodiversity project to an online data portal, its identification went through a rigorous verification process before being added to the HERC database.