About Us

The Staffordshire Biological Records Centre was established in 1974 as a project within the City Museum and Art Gallery (now the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery) in Hanley Stoke-on-Trent. This paper-based system resulted in a series of publications including a complete Atlas of the Staffordshire Butterflies and Larger Moths in 6 volumes.

In 1982 the Museum coordinated the Stoke-on-Trent Environmental Survey, which started the computerisation of the Records Centre’s data. This produced a dataset of some 16,000 records and a series of leaflets entitled ‘The Wildlife of Stoke-on-Trent’.

Finally in 2001 the SER Partnership was established and the Records Centre gained its first full time member of staff. SER also moved out of the Potteries Museum and was hosted by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust at their offices in Sandon – SER has subsequently followed SWT to their new offices at The Wolseley Centre on the outskirts of Rugeley.

SER now boasts a sophisticated mapping system containing the boundaries of all the important biological sites and the database has grown to well over 2 million records.

Although still relatively ‘young’ SER has produced four publications:

  • The Larger Moths of Staffordshire – An update of Richard Warren’s ground-breaking six volume atlas.
  • A Checklist of the Aculeate Hymenoptera of Staffordshire – this has been produced initially as an Internet Site, but a paper version may be produced.
  • A Survey of the Dragonflies of Lichfield – the results of a survey carried out by the Lichfield Group of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, available as an Internet Site.
  • The Smaller Moths of Staffordshire – An update of Richard Warren’s original 1988 booklet

    For further information contact info@staffs-ecology.org.uk