Moths are sensitive indicators of the health of the natural environment and a vital part of the food chain.

Of the 900 macro-moths that occur in Britain and Ireland, many appear to have undergone drastic declines in both abundance and range within the last 50 years. Unfortunately an accurate assessment of their conservation status is impossible as there is no comprehensive national dataset. A tremendous amount of moth recording takes place across Britain and Ireland, probably more so than any other European country. Whilst the current network of county moth recorders do a very valuable job in collecting records at the county level, there is no integrated system that harnesses all this information for a common purpose.

Butterfly Conservation has established a new National Moth Recording Scheme (NMRS), with the support of the moth recording community and many partner organisations. The NMRS covers the 900+ species of macro-moths in the UK, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. The aim is to establish the current distribution of each moth species and the change in distribution over time, and to make use of the records for conservation, education and research. Since 2007, 14 million sightings have been collated via a network of County Moth Recorders. Anyone can take part, so please visit www.mothscount.org for more information.