Have you seen page 42 (Club & Societies) of the Warrington Guardian today below is a copy for you to read. It’s an account I wrote about Sunday’s RECORD Conference at the Chester Zoo Lecture Theatre. Photos to go with the article can be found below posted on Sunday.
Warrington has a wealth of ecologists who live in the Town and on Sunday 7th May several of them played a big part delivering speeches at the Annual RECORD Conference at Chester Zoo.
Their passion shone through for their specialisms as well as recording data on RODIS (RECORD Online Data Input System) the Cheshire Biodiversity database.
RECORD is a charity and non-profit making organisation that deals with all data for Cheshire wildlife, Cheshire biodiversity, Cheshire nature, Cheshire habitats, Cheshire wildlife sites and Cheshire geology, geomorphology and geodiversity.
The Chair of RECORD, Tony Parker from Penketh introduced the speakers in turn. Many of them are members of the Warrington Nature Conservation Forum (WNCF) in fact Tony is a past chair.
The opening speaker and author Hugh Warwick gave a very interesting talk on his theory of Linescape:- Remapping and Reconnecting Britain’s Fragmented Wildlife (also the title of his new book).
His theory stems from decades of studying Hedgehogs.
Hugh said, “One way to help reconnect Hedgehog’s journeys is to make holes at the base of garden fences to allow them to get through to neighbouring gardens. The holes reconnect the hedgehog’s linescape.”
The WNCF will look for more ways of re-establishing the linescape in Warrington.
The next topic was about Swift surveys in Chester given by Roger Nutter.
During his talk, he praised Brian Martin a renown birder from Grappenhall. He said “Brian produced a comprehensive Swift survey across Cheshire back in 1995. We have been using his knowledge and expertise to guide us.
Jane Cullen from Latchford (Warrington Guardian’s 2015 Great and Green Award Winner) spoke about the work of the Wirral and Cheshire Badger Group under the title of the “Data Sett”.
The group’s aim is to protect the badger in many ways including a vaccination programme to prevent TB spreading to Cheshire and badgers being culled.
A colourful talk followed about Diptera (the study of flies) by Glenn Roston covering Hoverflies, Soldier flies, Crane flies and many more. He cited the excellent recording work and academic papers of his colleague from Croft, Phil Brighton.
The last speaker Carl Clee works with Tony Parker at Liverpool World Museum and he described the work that they are doing to produce the first ever on-line “Atlas of Bees, Wasps and Ants of Lancashire and Cheshire.”
Geoff Settle.