REPORT OF THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB FOR 2000-2001
Administration
The Council of the Essex Field Club met five times during the year 1999-2000 at the Red Cross
Hall, Chelmsford, one meeting being continued at Boreham. The main work of Council during the
year has been to consolidate the high standard the Field Club's publications, continuing to ensure
the future of the Field Club's collections and library and to highlight the importance of our recording
activities.
Meetings
The Field Club held 46 meetings and an Annual General Meeting during the year, 7 of which were
held jointly with other societies. The field meetings were as follows: fungi 10, higher plants 9, moths
5, amphibians and reptiles 1. birds 10, mammals 2, geological 3, general natural history 5, exhibition
1. The joint meetings were held with the Colchester Natural History Society, the Essex Rock and
Mineral Society, Essex Wildlife Trust and Bishops Stortford NHS. One meeting was a lecture on
moths and butterflies by Ian Rose. The Presidential Address at the AGM had been on 'Global
warming and its possible impact on Essex' by Peter Allen. Two of the meetings were Group annual
meetings. The number and range of the meetings remains encouraging and is an indication of the
breadth of the interest and the activity of the club.
The Exhibition was a new venture, held on November 18 at Chelmsford, to demonstrate the recording
and observational nature of our work. This was very successful with a purposeful but relaxed
atmosphere and was attended by over 50 members. Council has decided to hold this event annually
and shortly will be discussing venues and format.
Scientific achievements
The data collection and checking of records for the revised edition of the 1962 BSBI Atlas of the
British Flora, Atlas 2000, drew to a close at the end of January 2001. This project has involved
several Botany Group members assisting co-ordinator Ken Adams in the checking of a total of some
46,000 x 10 km sq. records, a wider group of members having already assisted in the accumulation
since 1987 of around 20,000 new records. The Botany Group has also been involved in accumulating
the database for two separate check lists of higher plants for Vc18 and Vc19, in association with the
new national Census Catalogue of Higher Plants being co-ordinated by Professor Clive Stace. These
new lists will form a sound basis for the preparation of the County Red Data lists.
Spider database
The EFC Recorder Spider database now has 44,500 Essex records, mostly the result of the efforts of
the Essex Spider Group and other Field Club Members since 1986. The database has gone into the
national scheme for publication by the National Biological Records Centre (now part of the National
Environmental Research Council's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) at the end of 2001 of the
first national atlas of British spiders.
County biological recording centre
Talks have been held, to which the Field Club has been a party, to establish a county-based biological
recording centre. Four members had a fruitful visit to the Hertfordshire recording centre to see how
the matter is organised there.
Essex Red Data project
Chris Gibson and Jes Dagley outlined the history, value and procedures of the project in the January
2001 Newsletter.
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 18 (2001)
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