by Gordon Hopkins

To follow the Moth Workshop held at the Devon Wildlife Trust headquarters in Exeter on 20th. September 2003, three national conferences have now taken place, and the last of these, to cover the whole of England took place at Warwick University on 10th. January.

This was a much larger event than the Exeter workshop with almost 100 delegates in attendance.

The morning session opened with a talk by Kelvin Conrad on theRothampsted Insect Survey, a scheme which started on a small scale in 1933 on the Rothampsted Estate in Hertfordshire. Since the 1960s it has operated a network of around 50 moth traps throughout Great Britain, to provide regular data on macromoth numbers in a consistent manner. The preliminary results of this study have shown that the populations of many once common species have been declining without anyone really noticing.

Tony Davis from Butterfly Conservation then gave a talk on Current Moth Recording Schemes. While there are eight schemes currently in operation, there is no general national recording scheme in existence, the establishment of which is the aim of this conference. The existing schemes cover scarce moth species, immigrants, BAPS, and specific genera. Tony went on to talk about his own scheme, which has been recording Pyralid and Plume Moths since 1994.

In the final talk of the morning session Adrian Spalding talked about previous schemes and the proposals for the new National Macromoth Recording Scheme, with particular emphasis on recording methods, data ownership, record validation and confidentiality. This paved the way for the open forum, which took up the entire afternoon session and led to some very heated discussion on the proposals for the scheme.

During the long break for lunch we were able to visit the trade stands (including BC) and see a short presentation on Recorder 2004, one of the databases currently used for recording both moths and butterflies.

Visit the website of the National Macromoth Recording Scheme at www.mothrecording.org.uk and fill in the on-line questionnaire.

Alternatively write to:

NMRS (planning)
Norfolk House
16-17 Lemon Street
Truro
TR1 2LS

And don’t forget:

NATIONAL MOTH NIGHT

22nd MAY 2004