More news

I was up in Scotland at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh last week and while I was there, I had a good look out for the horse-chestnut leaf miner. There was no sign of it anywhere! Indeed, it was strange to see the horse-chestnuts looking green, unlike in the south of England where they are very definitely browner than all the other trees.

We got a mention of the project in a really nice article in Science Omega on 17th September.

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.

Stephen Fry tweets

Stephen Fry likes our app! He tweeted today inviting people to join in. 

 

Join with the thousands of others and take part in the Mission: alien moth survey with the Leaf Watch app or via the website.

BBC Midlands Today

Today I filmed in Cheltenham with the BBC Midlands science correspondent David Gregory, who was really fascinated with the potential of the LeafWatch app to record the damage caused to our horse-chestnut trees.

David Gregory also blogged about the app.