Projects

BRISC organises and manages many projects of value to the recording community in Scotland, including bursaries for taxonomic courses.

Bursaries

Since 2009, BRISC (Biological Recording in Scotland) and GNHS (Glasgow Natural History Society) have been offering bursaries towards attending a training course in natural history field studies. These bursaries are open to anyone living in Scotland who wants to improve their skills and contribute to biological recording.

From 2023 we are pleased to be able to increase our bursary offer to £400, up to £100 of which can go towards transport costs, to make it easier to attend courses. Find out more and download the application form on our Bursary page.

Grid reference reader

A free grid reference reader, the size and thickness of a credit card.

This product is helpful for accurately reading the grid reference of a site. It comes with two scales, the bigger for the 1:25,000 OS maps and the smaller for the 1:50,000 OS maps. To use it just place the reader on relevant 1km square, taking care to align the border of the reader's grid with the blue line of the square and the exact 6 figure reference becomes obvious. Remember to read the 'east-ing' before the 'north-ings'.

Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum (SBIF)

At the AGM in 2008, the proposal of an e-petition was debated, together with a possible wording. With the approval of the membership, Craig Macadam took the petition forward.

Wording of the e-petition

“Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to establish integrated local and national structures for collecting, analysing and sharing biological data to inform decision making processes to benefit biodiversity."

See the text of the e-petition in PE1229

After receiving 718 "signatures" the petition was discussed by the Petitions Committee and following several meetings between the Committee and representatives of BRISC, a set of recommendations were put forward by the Science Group to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum (SBIF) was established in 2010.

All information about SBIF can now be found on the National Biodiversity Network's Scotland page. There is also a SBIF Blog.