Derbyshire ARG has been working with the Moors for the Future project to launch their Scales and Warts survey http://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/community-science/scales-and-warts the latest in their HLF funded Community Science surveys for the public. The launch was held at Hathersage on Thursday 6th April and 86 people attended to hear talks by Sarah Proctor, Community Science Project Manager for Moors for the Future, Kim Strawbridge from the Eastern Moors Partnership and Chris Monk from Derbyshire ARG. The survey joins existing surveys on bumblebees, butterflies, sphagnum & mosses, hares and others where people are asked to look out for just a few of the species that occur in the area. So far several hundred records have been received for the earlier surveys, the aim being to feed in data about species distribution that will be used to see how the ecosystems are coping and to determine how they will respond to climate change.

People can collect reply paid postcards to fill in and post back from Visitor Centres & other venues around the area, enter sightings via the surveys web form or download the free MOORWILD phone & tablet app available for both Apple & Android, links to download are on the MoorAPPS page where other apps for moss, plants and landscape are also available. Data about possible adder and common lizard distribution is particularly lacking from the northern & western Dark Peak and the South Pennines and it is hoped this survey will locate new sightings. The app and the web form also allow people to upload photos to aid in verification, which is particularly valuable for determining if a reported snake is an adder or a grass snake as these are often mis-identified.

Due to unforeseen circumstances our speaker for the spring meeting had to cancel so prior to the AGM the secretary updated the members on the October 2016 Vanishing Viper adder conference and also on the Natural England GCN District Level Licensing Project that was the subject of a presentation at the 2017 Herpetofauna Workers Meeting in February at Nottingham.

It is hoped to reschedule the grass snake and adder research talk to later in the year.

Our Spring meeting on Saturday 4th March starting at 2pm will feature a talk by Kevin Palmer from Reaseheath College in Nantwich on the research activity that has been taking place at the College, including work with both adders and grass snakes. The meeting is free & open to anyone and will also cover Natural England's proposals on District Level Licensing for great crested newt, followed by a brief AGM for Derbyshire ARG members.

The meeting is being held in the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Whistlestop Centre at Matlock Bath Railway Station just off the A6 road. There is a large pay & display car park at the station.

The Freshwater Habitats Trust have sent out the results from the analysis for great crested newt eDNA of their Pond Net samples earlier this year. Members of Derbyshire ARG had a field trip to a pond near Pilsbury in the Peak National Park which was the square allocated to us in the PondNet survey. A previous visit by FHT in 2015 was apparently negative for GCN eDNA but our sample from May 2016 has come back as positive for the presence of great crested newts.

Two other ponds near Hartington where we went on to take further eDNA samples for analysis by ADAS (and paid for by Derbyshire ARG) had already come back as positive for great crested newts. The farmer who owns one of the ponds would like us to survey all his 4 ponds in 2017 so it is planned to organise surveys there and at another farm near Pikehall next spring.

A working party of Derbyshire ARG members undertook conservation work at the end of October 2016 to clear vegetation on a dewpond on the edge of a hay meadow near Hartington in the Peak District. Previous recording which started in 1988 and was more regular in the past decade had shown that the pond supported great crested and smooth newts, common frog and common toad. However after years of virtually no change, in the past two years nearly all the dewpond was swamped by Glyceria that formed a thick floating mat leaving just a small open water area in the middle.

The Glyceria mat was so interconnected that it had to be cut up into segments so that it could be pulled out using pond rakes. About two thirds of the pond was cleared leaving sufficient vegetation on one side where there was a greater variety of emergent aqautic plants. Hopefully the small clump of Potamogeton natans that was still surviving in the open water area when we arrived will spread back into the cleared areas.