Survey, Surveillance, Monitoring & Recording

Abstract

Monitoring, surveillance and recording are all activities concerned with the collection and management of information. They are an indispensable and ­integral component of management planning: without information there can be no planning. ‘Survey’ is simply making a single observation to measure and record something. ‘Surveillance’ is repeating standardised surveys in order that change can be detected. This is quite different to, but often confused with, monitoring. Surveillance is used to detect change but does not differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable change. ‘Monitoring’ is surveillance undertaken to ensure that formulated standards are being maintained. Monitoring should be an essential and integral component of management planning: there can be no planning without monitoring and no monitoring without planning. There should be a direct relationship between the accuracy of the conditions that management can deliver and the level of accuracy that a monitoring project is designed to measure. The development of any monitoring strategy should be based on the availability of resources and on a risk assessment. ‘Recording’ is concerned with making a permanent and accessible record of significant activities (including management), events and anything else that has relevance to the site. Recording management activities must be given the highest priority: if something is worth doing it must be worth recording. Recording is an expensive activity, and it must be planned with exactly the same rigour as all other aspects of reserve management.