Sunday 15 January 2012

Featuring in the Observer Ethical Awards

As part of the Observer Ethical Awards, Lucy Siegle, who runs the awards, wanted something for voters to do once they had voted. She invited me (Michael Pocock) and Darren Evans to create an invasive species citizen science project. Of course, being so involved in Conker Tree Science, we had to include the horse-chestnut leaf-miner as one of the featured species!

We chose to make sure that people were invited to submit records for all the 10 species to recording schemes that were already running, so that the data really would be useful and that the excellent work so many organisations are doing will get promoted. It was just a shame that the Observer project was promoted during the winter when many of the species were dormant. We hope that people will continue to report these species during this summer and that it will raise awareness of the potential problems of invasive species.