The UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group

The UK’s National Biodiversity Research Platform

UK BRAG exists to:

• Identify, promote and facilitate biodiversity research to support UK and individual country biodiversity action plan commitments¹;
• Coordinate effective and efficient UK engagement with European biodiversity research issues, fulfilling the role of a national biodiversity research platform;
• Contribute to effective biodiversity research networking in the UK, leading to increased interdisciplinary capacity;
• Support knowledge transfer activities in relation to biodiversity research.

Advance Notice - Workshop 8th September 2010, Leeds.

The Marine and Coastal Access Act - what does it mean for biodiversity research.

The BES and UK BRAG will be collaborating at the BES Annual meeting in Leeds, to hold an afternoon workshop looking at the Marine and Coatal Access Act.

This workshop will introduce delegates to the UK Marine and Coastal Access Act, and will discuss what the Act may mean for the conservation of biodiversity in UK seas. The aim is to facilitate discussion as to how the Act can be followed up to best identify  research needs and promote conservation of biodiversity.

We will hear from four speakers, with a panel discussion forum to conclude. The speakers’ topics are provisionally;               

•  An introduction to the Marine and Coastal Access act;
•  What does the act mean for conservation?;
•  Managing conflicts and conflict resolution;          
•  Marine ecosystem services.

Further information

BES - BRAG event 2009 focused on the NEA

The British Ecological Society (BES) Science Policy Team, and the UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group (UK BRAG) held a joint workshop on Wednesday 9^th September, at the University of Hertfordshire de Havilland campus, looking at the development of the National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA).  The workshop was to facilitate connections between those with an interest in biodiversity research and policy, and those involved in developing the NEA. A summary report of the session is available to download. If you have any problems with this or any other reports on the UK BRAG website, please 

The programme is available.

The NEA is intended to;

• provide a synthesis of the state of the natural environment and provision of ecosystem services, exploring future scenarios and possible policy responses;
• create a compelling and coherent narrative on both the state and value of natural environment and ecosystem services, to help raise awareness of their importance to human well-being and future economic prosperity;
• involve an inclusive process of interaction with stakeholders and communities of interest to interact and share learning, and in particular to foster better inter-disciplinary cooperation between natural and social scientists.

The session was an opportunity to look at how the NEA is operating and to feed into how the research community and policy makers would like to see it used. There were presentations and discussion from

11am – 12:30 pm, with lunch and networking for participants, followed by a breakout into discussion groups and a final report back. 

See also the BES and NEA websites.

Latest publications:-

Report for 2007-2008

The last report covered the period 2003 - 2006. This report provides a summary of UK BRAG activity since then.  

Marine biodiversity and the provision of goods and services: identifying the research priorities.

Given the difficulties in sampling and understanding the processes occurring in the marine environment, comparatively little is known of how marine biodiversity contributes to the delivery of goods and services relied upon by people.

With this in mind a special sub group of the UK BRAG was convened to look at Marine biodiversity and the provision of goods and services. Their 2008 report is now available.

UK BRAG 3 Year Report

A summary of the important knowledge gaps, identified by the UK Biodiversity Advisory Group 2003-2006, 'Research Needs for UK Biodiversity', has now been published.  Hard copies are available from the UK BRAG Secretariat ( )

UK BRAG Leaflet

The UK BRAG Secretariat have produced a leaftet to summarise the role, activities and work of UK BRAG; the leaflet can be downloaded here.  Requests for hard copies should be made by email to

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