Sparsholt College Group (SCG) is delighted to announce that we have been named as one of twenty-three shortlisted for the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) Great British Wildlife Restoration award for our research on ‘Conserving the Tiger Beetle’.
The Great British Wildlife Restoration aims to highlight the important conservation taking place around us. The winner, as voted for by MPs and Lords, will be announced during a Parliamentary Reception next week. Gary Miller, Head of Zoo at the Animal Management Centre, will be heading up to parliament for the occasion.
The research focusses on Green Tiger Beetles (Cicindela campestris) which, as the name suggests, are beautiful metallic green beetles. They are extremely fast runners and fearsome predators in the insect world. They are currently relatively widespread in the UK and can be found in a range of habitats, including lowland heathland and sandy grasslands. They are closely related to the Heath Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sylvatica), a species which is now sadly extremely rare in the UK and found in only a handful of places in the south of England.
To try to protect the rare Heath Tiger Beetle for the future, the Species Recovery Trust and SCG set up a captive breeding project. The ultimate aim is to reintroduce beetles to suitable sites in England, to increase both the number of sites in the country but also the number of beetles in some of the existing sites, where numbers appear to be critically low. The beetles are so closely related that the lessons learnt from breeding Green Tiger Beetles can be used in the future to breed Heath Tiger Beetles successfully.
Here at Sparsholt College we have now successfully bred both the Green Tiger Beetles and the Heath Tiger Beetles and are now patiently waiting for the adult Heath Tiger Beetles to emerge.
Good luck to all shortlisted and we can’t wait to share more about this project!
See the full shortlist on the BIAZA Website here