Nature’s Rare Treasures

Name: Nature’s Rare Treasures
Start: 2026-06-28T09:45:00+01:00
End: 2026-06-28T09:45:00+01:00
Location: Crofthandy Village Hall

About

Free Entry - Morning Session Only is Ticketed - Lunch Provided - A Donation Request for Refreshments.
We are delighted to bring to you ‘Nature’s Rare Treasures’ found here, right on our doorstep. Hidden away on the site of United Downs Raceway there are rare and/or threatened species, of which 25 carry a schedule 8 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act, Red Data Book, Nationally Scarce or Cornish Red Data Book Designation. We offer you the opportunity to hear experts in their field talk of these incredible findings and their importance. In the afternoon we invite you on a journey with the team of experts to the site, United Downs Raceway…‘Looking Through the Looking Glass’. For more information contact Uniteddeg@gmail.com
Nature’s Rare Treasures
Short biographical paragraphs from the three speakers:

Dr Marcus Rhodes is an ecologist and conservation scientist. He is Chair of Cornwall Butterfly Conservation and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Exeter, Cornwall. His academic research explores how species respond to climate change and the co-design of spatial strategies for nature conservation. He played a leading role in the development of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Nature Recovery Strategy. He will be telling us about Cornwall Butterfly Conservation's Jewels in the Cornish Mining Landscape project.

Marcus will talk about the butterflies of the mine sites around United Downs where he has been studying Silver-studded Blue butterflies in particular.

Matt Stribley was born in Truro and trained as a civil engineer, but has always been drawn to the natural world. Over the past ten years, he has focused on mosses and liverworts (Bryophytes), surveying the rich and sometimes overlooked flora of Cornwall, including its historic mining landscapes. He is the Regional Recorder for Cornwall with the British Bryological Society.
Matt will talk about the mosses and liverwort of mine sites, which support an especially important suite of very rare species that are adopted to the high levels of metal contamination, particularly copper.

Dr Colin French was born in Redruth and have a PhD in Palaeoecology. I have been the West Cornwall Recorder for the Botanical Society for Britain & Ireland for over 30 years and in that time have been part of a small group of Botanists who have systematically surveyed the whole of Cornwall twice. This enabled me to co-write the Flora of Cornwall which was published in 1999 and to write and publish A Flora of Cornwall in 2020. I have also developed the ERICA database which is the most comprehensive dataset of Cornwall's wildlife available and is used by many of the key biological recorders and groups such as Butterfly Conservation.
Colin's talk will be on the Flora of Cornwall's mine sites with special reference to the St Day Raceway.