Background: Funded by the World Bank's NEMO1 project, the Steppe Forward Programme (a collaboration between the Zoological Society of London and the National University of Mongolia) produced the Mongolian Biodiversity Databank.
So far the project has collected and collated information on all of the mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and freshwater fish of Mongolia and produced widely-used Mongolian Red Lists and Action Plans. By the end of 2009 the addition of Mongolia's birds will mean that all Mongolian vertebrates will have been included the databank. The databank holds data that are essential for effectively planning the conservation of Mongolian biodiversity. In addition to assessing the regional conservation status of species, the databank contains information on population trends, threats, legal protection that exists for those species, summary conservation action plans and species distribution data.
The aim of the databank is to collate this information and provide the means to inform effective conservation measures within Mongolia, in particular, the use of distribution data is essential for identifying national priority areas such as location with high species richness, high endemicity, high threat, and identify the potential impacts of development at a given location.
The new online spatial tool takes the use of distribution data one-step further, in making all the data simultaneously available in an effective, visual, searchable format, allowing diligent environmental assessment, and conservation planning and management. In doing so, the team has provided a tool which will give the user the ability to access information on which species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and freshwater fish are present at a given point in Mongolia, the tool will allow anyone to download a list of how many species, both threatened and non-threatened, are within a given distance of a selected location. By making this interactive functionality available on the web, the project will maximise the utility of the Biodiversity Databank as conservation tool.
 EIA tool based on the Mongolian Biodiversity Databank
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