2024 County Report for North Hampshire

Tony Mundell

A total of 5,894 records for 2024, covering over 900 taxa, were added to the DDb. The majority of these came via MapMate, with some via the BSBI Recording app. I intend to wean myself off MapMate in 2025 and contribute records directly to the DDb instead.

The number of contributors and records has declined significantly since 2017- 2019 when we collected over 30,000 records annually for Atlas 2020.The decrease is mainly because recent effort has concentrated on trying to re-find previous records of threatened plants, using the BSBI’s former Threatened Plants Project methodology and recording form. The majority of those targeted species were not found, so added few new records.

I do still receive many records via Living Record, so my thanks to those who continue to contribute records that way.

During the year I led three field trips for our Hampshire Flora Group, see https://www.hantsplants.uk/ . Accompanied by others I also conducted surveys requested by land owners. This included a survey of about 30 arable fields on the Leckford Estate, recording all species in each field and resulting in an IAPA (Important Arable Plant Area) score for each field and the estate as a whole, using Plantlife’s methodology. Again assisted by others, I made a requested survey of many grassland areas at the Alice Holt Research Station to support a proposed change in mowing policy aimed at increasing diversity. Another survey was made of arable fields at the Roundwood Estate with the results sent to the land owner.