Topic: Taxon Designations on R6 - JNCC combined list
I've just run off a list of species for a local planning authority, using all the spp on the dictionary named "JNCC collation of taxon designations" and various attributes including the long, short and abbreviated designation names. Looking at it, the designations don't all match the current list downloadable from here: Conservation designations for UK taxa. What is more, they don't match the outputs from last year's list either! For example, the list includes:
Starling Sturnus vulgaris - output doesn't mention the Birds of Conservation Concern Red listing, only the Birds Directive Annex 2.2 (not helpful in this context) and FEP007. The same applies to Song Thrush and House Sparrow (should be Red) and Bullfinch (should be Amber). I haven't checked all the others. If you look up Starling in the Taxon Dictionary Browser, however, Bird-Red is listed in the Statuses column.
For Starling there is also no mention of England Priority Species or NERC Act status in the outputs OR the Taxon Dictionary browser.
Other birds, e.g. Cuckoo (Red) show up correctly in the designation outputs column as "Bird-Red"; House Martin and Dunnock (Bird-Amber).
Dandelion Taraxacum officinale agg. appears on the list, but with no designation listed in the outputs at all, or the taxon dictionary browser. Surely a list of species restricted to everything on the JNCC list shouldn't have this?
Poa pratensis comes up in the Taxon Dictionary browser for the JNCC list, but has no status listed. It also appears in the output with no status listed.
I haven't time to go through them all, but this affects quite a few species.
Incidentally, using the List tab in the taxon dictionary to check the species status seems to be taking a long time.
I have reindexed the taxon dictionary but it hasn't changed anything. Long story short, we cannot rely on R6 for outputting accurate designation statuses, and must go through every output to change the relevant designations and tweak the list, so as not to mislead the recipient of the data.
Does anyone know if this is a problem of Recorder 6 and the taxon dictionaries, or something wrong with either the querying system in R6, or our own database?
Linda