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Committee member Jenny Joy reports on WM-BAMS' first major new collaborative project, supporting two partners in increasing the recording of butterflies and moths around Telford.
This was a new project organised by Telford & Wrekin Council and Telford Green Spaces Partnership, funded by Fujitsu and supported by the West Midlands Butterfly and Moth Society.
Its overall aim was to encourage more people to become involved in recording locally by running a series of ID training events to increase awareness of the diversity of species present locally; these events were run by Mike Williams. In addition to this, an activity was set up within iRecord to enable the Council to download the species results and assess success of the project easily. Similarly, a WhatsApp group was set up to enable recorders to see quickly what butterflies and moths were being recorded and where these were, so they had a chance to go and see them for themselves.
So, did the project work? It certainly did, as you can see from the table below. The area was fairly poorly recorded in 2025 and the number of records was at least four times higher in 2026.
There was also a fairly good distribution of the records across the Telford & Wrekin area, with the Wellington and Ironbridge Gorge areas among the hotspots. Painted Ladies were reasonably well represented here, with hill-topping behaviour seen on the Wrekin summit and more than 50 adults there on one occasion in early July (alongside similar numbers of Red Admiral).
Butterfly and moth records from the project
Painted Lady records from the project
The number of records obtained for relatively common species locally, such as Gatekeeper and Speckled Wood, significantly increased, as did the number of records for local rarities, such as Silver-washed Fritillary, Brown Argus and Dingy Skipper.
One of the project's highlights was the success of using pheromone lures, yielding new species records for Lunar Hornet Moth, Yellow-legged Clearwing, Currant Clearwing and Red-tipped Clearwing. Best of all was the unexpected recording of Six-belted Clearwing at an event in Rough Park in June. Media interest in a subsequent press release was high, resulting in a piece on the moths on the BBC Midlands Today website; this led to a local lady finding one in her garden, which must be a very rare event!
Lunar Hornet Moth coming to pheromone lure, Ironbridge Gorge (Alexander Lickley)
Identification leaflet issued to project volunteers, produced by Telford & Wrekin Council, written by Jenny Joy and Mike WilliamsWhat did we learn from this project? Well, it gave us a better understanding of the current status of some species and where there are gaps in our knowledge of others. It increased awareness of the diversity of species present locally: this area supports a wonderful array of habitats and species, and has the potential to support even more.
What is the project legacy? Well, we hope to continue to run a butterfly and day-flying moth recording group here, with the aim of getting more contributors to the project activity on iRecord in 2027. We also plan to hold at least one indoor and two outdoor meetings a year to encourage more local recorders.
A huge thank you to everyone who took part in this project in any way, particularly Fujitsu for funding the project and Telford & Wrekin Council staff (Adrian, Beth, Catherine and Ben) for setting up and organising the project. Please do join us again in 2027 and make it an equally exciting group to be involved in next year.
Project volunteers searching for butterflies and moths in Lloyds Coppice, Ironbridge, in July