Joint BRC/Butterfly Conservation Millenium Atlas

By Richard Southall and Digby Wood

Records for the Millennium Atlas came in thick and fast at the end of the summer as five years of intensive effort came to their conclusion. Not only effort by BRC and BC (Butterfly Conservation) Members, but also very many recorders from county Wildlife Trusts and divers other wildlife groups. BC were amazed and delighted at the excellent level of support received from these outside organisations especially during the final year when much of the effort was directed at poorly recorded areas such as the arable areas of Cambridgeshire and remote areas like Cape Wrath, County Mayo and the Lleyn peninsular. Volunteers from the Dublin Naturalist’s Field Club have enabled the Republic of Ireland to be included, and there has been similar coverage of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Altogether some 1.5 million records are expected when all the returns have been entered.

Worcestershire’s recording has been a great success with 496 of our 497 tetrads being covered. This last tetrad would have been recorded but for the unfortunate fact that our intrepid recorder fell and broke his ankle whilst out recording. Happily he has now recovered.

We offer our grateful thanks to all Worcs. BRC and WWT Members who sent in their records. We regret that it is not possible to acknowledge all contributions individually but West Midlands Branch will be publishing a local atlas and we hope to acknowledge all contributors in this when we have found a way to get this information out of our computer.

The National Millennium Atlas will be published later in the year by Oxford University Press and, apart from the distribution maps, it will include a wealth of recent ecological information together with results from the Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and an analysis of this information leading to plans for combating species decline.

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