The UK BAP site is an informative point of entry to the national biodiversity action plan, species action plans and habitat action plans. Managed by the JNCC, it is imaginatively presented, as well as authoritative and up to date. It gives access to individual plans, and allows them to be downloaded if required. The cross-referencing is rather easier than holding the enormous tomes required for paper copies of the plans, and it is simple to discover which local plans exist to cover the species or habitat of interest. Individual local plans, say Suffolk, have been incorporated in summary into the master website, and links are provided to allow deeper investigation, though some of these lead you to loop back to the National SAP, rather than on to the Suffolk plan
A helpful "News" section gives detail of recent developments at Governmental or Conservation Agency level, and first-time visitors will find a clear explanation of diversity. The site, a collaborative venture, funded by DEFRA, is supported by some nice illustrations. A recent addition allows on-line recording of BAP species.
I had an enjoyable and rewarding learning experience - 45 minutes browsing the website of the British Plant Gall Society. Although the site is primarily aimed at “cecidology” practitioners, and there is plenty for the expert, it is very accessible to the novice like me: indeed a lot of effort appears to have gone into this aspect. There is a beginner’s page with good descriptions of common gall types and their “causers” and agents, including text boxes of basic practical tips and advice. The links page is excellent, providing easy transfer to international sites, a comprehensive list of books and catalogs (sic), databases, journals, online texts, societies and museums. The back issues page for the BPGS journal, Cecidology, contains a full list of journal contents back to 1985. Though this is still under development, eight editions are available in HTML format so the articles can be read online or downloaded. (Beginners can understand some of these too!). There are some good drawings in the journals, but few photos. Indeed the weakest aspect of the site is a dearth of photographs. There is more to this site than I have outlined here and if you are curious about galls I enthusiastically recommend paying it a visit to see for yourself.
David Walker
We stopped supplying zip files of the magazine for download, with issue 53.
This is because the service was very infrequently used and it saves space on the server.
If you miss downloading however please e-mail me, Adrian Chalkley
I will decide whether there is sufficient demand for an alternative method.