News

Publication in May 2014. Order your copy at the pre-publication price: £20 + P&P. See attached order form.

This full colour book (approx. 400 pages) represents five years work by volunteers and partner organisations to map the distribution of damselflies and dragonflies in Britain and Ireland. This much needed atlas summarises the distribution of over a million dragonfly records.

The purpose of the survey is to:

• Begin to record the distribution of otter activity in coastal areas in all area of Britain.

• Raise awareness of use of coastal areas by otters in Britain. This includes sandy beaches, dunes, docks, salt marshes, estuaries and rocky shorelines.

• The information need not be recent as any sightings over the last 30 years are useful to us.

The MaMoNet Wales project has been given permission and sufficient footprint tunnels to carry out a formal 10-tunnel survey at the stunning Cors Erddreiniog NNR, Anglesey.

Volunteers are needed to undertake the survey.

The physical side to the survey entails deploying the footprint tunnels every 100m along a transect. The tunnels are left for 5 consecutive nights and need to be checked daily. The checks entail changing the paper, adding the date to the paper and re-baiting the tunnels with hot dog sausages (hedgehogs preferred food!).

In order for the data to be analysed there are some online tools that need to be used. This entails plotting tunnel locations on Google Earth and uploading footprint results using a quick and easy online form. We can help with print ID.

Ideally, this survey needs to be repeated in September and October this year and it would be fantastic if volunteers could continue next year.

The Mammal Society can provide advice and support but is unable to attend in person.