Wednesday 2 March 2016

More on Micros and the NMRS

Butterfly Conservation have now published further details about this exciting development:

Micro-moths and the NMRS

This original post refers to the initial announcement:
New national micro-moth recording scheme announced

Monday 15 February 2016

Your County's moths need you...

As the County Moth Recorder for West Kent (Vice County 16) I urgently need your moth records from 2015.

Once verified, these will form an important part of the National Moth Recording System (NMRS), managed by Butterfly Conservation.  Given the state of many of our moths, having an accurate picture of their distribution has never been so important, your records will really help with this.

Please see the how to submit records section of the westkentmoths blog or email me if you have further questions.


Thursday 11 February 2016

New County Moth Recorder for West Kent

After much deliberation and discussion, I finally took the plunge and stepped forward to take on the CMR role for VC16, West Kent.  This has now been confirmed by Butterfly Conservation. My name is Dave Shenton and I am a very active moth recorder in Kent with a special interest in micro moths, particularly leaf miners and other early stages.

Please get in touch with any comments or suggestions or if you would like to 'join' the site to add your sightings and other information: the more the merrier.

I am pleased to confirm that Rae Edwards is also part of the 'team' and will be managing data collection and incorporation into the central MapMate hub.

With the Atlas of Britain and Ireland's Larger Moths due to be published in 2018 and the forthcoming addition of micro moth records to the National Moth Recording System (NMRS) it is vital that all our efforts in moth recording in West Kent and Kent as a whole, are represented.

We need your records as this is the official route by which they can be verified and submitted to Butterfly Conservation and the NMRS, so please get in touch.

Please submit your moth records from 2015 to us as soon as possible.

Dave

Friday 5 February 2016

New!!!! A National “Micro-moth” Recording Scheme

This is fantastic news…
Text taken from post by Les Hill (BC)
Probably the single biggest and arguably most important announcement from the National Moth Recorders’ Meeting at Birmingham…
From 1st April, the National Moth Recording Scheme will start to accept micro-moth records for the first time! Micro-moth records however, will go through a more thorough verification process than macro-moths in order for it to work. Every species and commonly-recorded life stage has been allocated a grade similar to the grades on our website and many other moth group websites. All records within reason will be verified according to these criteria – by the way, these national grades and recording criteria have been designed by many acknowledged taxa experts, people with a vast amount of experience and who KNOW what they are talking about. However, there will be instances where local grades and rulesets may overrule the national guidelines.
There will be three possible levels of verification: Firstly, the County Moth Recorder (CMR). If for any reason the CMR is unable to verify a species’ record, it will be passed to a Regional Verification Panel (RVP) of experts in order to help the CMR make an informed decision. If for any reason the RVP are unable to verify that record, it will be referred to a National Verification Panel (NVP) of experts for a final decision. The NVP will also have access to the full dataset in the National Moth Recording Scheme for final verification checks as they see fit. In all instances, the CMRs, or Verification Panel’s decision will be final. There will be feedback to recorders throughout the verification process.
There will be a minority of people who will disagree that such panels should exist (or CMRs for that matter) seeing them merely as just layers of bureaucracy which is their right to hold that view; however, moth recording, apart from as we know being a fantastic hobby, must be taken seriously and data verification is an essential process – after all, we are contributing to science. The data we provide to the national schemes must be robust as our data are used to make informed government policy and conservation decisions.
I suspect for most recorders it will be business as usual and it will all happen quite seamlessly. The only difference is the data generated will go further than just county datasets.