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Regional Officers to Boost BC’s Work in West Midlands

The two brand new Regional Officer Posts have been appointed by Butterfly Conservation for the West Midlands. Dr Jenny Joy and Jane Ellis will focus on strengthening and expanding the work of volunteers to monitor, protect and raise the profile of butterflies and moths in the region. The new posts have major funding from DEFRA’s Environmental Action Fund.

Dr Jenny Joy is a previous volunteer with Butterfly Conservation and Jane Ellis is former Biodiversity Co-ordinator for Warwickshire. As Regional Officers they will boost the work of local volunteers by ensuring efforts are directed to where they are most needed, supporting their work through advice, information and training. They will also be building links with new and existing partner organisations, landowners, and government bodies and securing funding to help with projects to conserve local butterfly and moth species.

The Regional Officers will be working hard to ensure that the targets within Butterfly Conservation's Regional Action plan are met.

Some examples of projects to help high priority species from the Action Plan in 2003 are:

• Pearl Bordered Fritillary in the Wyre Forest  - survey and monitoring work

• Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary in Shropshire and North Staffordshire - co-ordinating, monitoring and survey work at a number of key sites.

• High Brown Fritillary and Grayling in the Malverns -  survey involving two volunteer events.


The two posts form 2 halves of a job share. Jenny will be focussing mainly on species project work and Jane will work on developing wider links, awareness raising and sourcing funds for project work.

Contact:

Jane Ellis – Phone / Fax (01788) 543809 or email jellis@butterfly-conservation.org
Jenny Joy – Phone (01952) 249325 or email joy.croft@btinternet.com