Our March meeting in 2024 was our 40th birthday! Our inaugural meeting was held on 15th March 1984 at the White Hart pub in Duffield. The minutes from that meeting state that it was felt very important that the Group should collect bat records for the whole county and that training was seen as an important element.
40 years on and twelve bat species are now known to reside within our borders and we have a healthy membership of over 200 members. At our 40th, our longest serving member of the group, Alan Wragg, gave a talk on the history of the group highlighting some key milestones. You can see some of these on our timeline. The above photo shows several group members who attended the 2024 Midlands Bat Conference, a regional event for all bat groups in the Midlands region which takes place every three years. Here's to the next 40 years!
