Posted April 18, 2024 in Conservation
Fisher’s Estuarine Moth
At the end of March 2024, Glen Fairweather, Team Leader of Reptile Section, and Zoe Ringwood of the Essex Wildlife Trust, released Colchester Zoo’s last batches of Fisher’s Estuarine Moth eggs onto one of the wild sites at Brook Country Park near Clacton.
Thankfully, we had good breeding pairs in 2023 and 13 batches were released, each containing 20-100 eggs per batch.
Our Reptile team at Colchester Zoo won’t be breeding the moths now for the foreseeable future, unless there becomes a need when new habitat sites are created. For now, we will continue to manage the caterpillar food plants, Hog’s fennel, on site throughout the year and grow on young plants as we have always done.
It was sad to release the last batches, but we are pleased to have contributed towards saving the moth species; by reintroducing from our breeding population at the zoo and releasing on a number of different sites over many years.
