News

As an Environmental Scientist at Forest Research, Frank provides specialist expertise on soil sustainability through research into woodland soil quality and soil ecology. Frank is particularly interested in the interactions between soil physical, chemical and biological quality and woodland ecology and ecosystem service delivery.

The Field Studies Council have secured a £1.23 million The National Lottery grant through the Heritage Lottery Fund to fund invertebrate identification training and recording events across the West Midlands and South East England.

The project will include training courses covering beetles, true flies, aculeate hymentoptera, molluscs, freshwater invertebrates, true bugs, arachnids and (most importantly) soil invertebrates.

The records submitted to the National Earthworm Recording Scheme during 2016 have been processed and we bring you this report to show you what these records are starting to tell us. All of the records covered by this report are available to download from the NBN Gateway (just search for Earthworm Society of Britain).

2016 was a great year for the ESB and this report summarises our progress regarding:

Today the ESB reached a new social media landmark as we now have over 1,000 likes on Facebook! We received a sudden surge in likes due to our new video 'Earthworms Are Important'. The video has been shared by many, including Springwatch and BBC Wildlife Magazine. Watch our animation 'Earthworms Are Important'...

Please note that due to continuous issues with our email addresses we have made the decision to switch to gmail accounts. Our old email accounts will be monitored on an occasional basis only now so please send enquiries to the following email accounts:

For membership enquiries please email us at ESBmembers@gmail.com

For all other enquiries please email us at ESBenquiries@gmail.com

2015 was our most productive year to date! We received 3,488 new earthworm records for our database, with ESB recorders submitting 925 earthworm records (a healthy increase on the 608 records submitted by ESB recorders in 2014).

In 2011 we first ran the Earthworm Compost Survey. We had a great response, over 225 people told us about their compost and 209 people found earthworms in their compost!