Contract for Wildlife Community Study Group within the Foresters' Forest Heritage Lottery Funded Programme

The Forestry Commission will be awarding a contract to support the existing project leaders within the 'Stronghold for Nature' theme of the Foresters' Forest programme. Although these leaders are expert in their own field, they are likely to need assistance when managing volunteers 'out in the field', performing ecological surveys or completing conservation works. The long term objective for this project is to create a self-sustaining community wildlife study group (CWSG). This contract addresses the need to support and train local people in how to identify and record data under the various projects involved with habitats and species included in the Foresters' Forest Programme. Our intention is to award this contract for a period of 4.25 years, from Dec 2017- March 2022.

The Foresters' Forester Landscape Partnership Programme has ambitious targets to recreate and expand key habitats and to increase the populations of rare and common species alike. In order to demonstrate that the activities proposed have delivered the desired outcomes in terms of increased biodiversity, a monitoring programme is required to track progress. This monitoring programme brings together all the various projects under the Foresters' Forest Programme which involves habitats and species. It is the intention that the data captured from this monitoring programme will be collated by the Gloucestershire Centre for Environmental Records (GCER) for interpretation and reporting and they will be responsible for the co-ordination and data management.

The appointed contractor will support this monitoring programme ensuring useful data is lodged with GCER, providing support to the biodiversity projects in general and getting in place a self-sustaining study group for beyond the programme.

Please express your interest in this tender to Anne-Clare Landolt (anne-clare.landolt@forestry.gsi.gov) and Sue Middleton (Sue.middleton@forestry.gsi.gov.uk) by email by 12pm Wednesday 29th Nov 2017 to allow us to notify you of any questions and answers we may receive.

Additional information: Suppliers must express their interest in this tender by the 12:00pm on 29th Nov 2017 and download the attached tender documents by the same date. Copies of Biodiversity Baseline Report available on request from Anne-Clare/Sue.