North Carolina has more than 3,000 species of moths, and Durham County is hosting an event this weekend to get up close and personal with the winged insects.
Moth Night will be this Saturday at 8 p.m. at Hollow Rock Nature Park in Durham and Orange counties. The event is a collaboration between David George, of the North Carolina Biodiversity Project, and the Durham County Open Space Program, a government-run land protection program.
David Bradley, a specialist with the Open Space Program, said Moth Night will include using microscopes and hand lenses, and playing games like Moth Bingo to allow participants to learn about and see moths.
“We're going to use lights and sheets to attract moths onto the sheets to then look at each kind and identify it, and keep track of the species we're finding,” Bradley said. “It should be a very fun time. There should be lots out there, and we never know what we're going to find.”
The event’s host site of Hollow Rock Nature Park is in an area known as the New Hope Creek Corridor. According to Bradley, this corridor contains some of the most biologically diverse places in Central North Carolina.
A 2021-2022 survey created a biological inventory of the area. Among its findings were that moth populations in the corridor seemed to be experiencing a “startling” decline. That matches trends found elsewhere in the state, Bradley said, and across the globe, with such a decrease dubbed by some scientists as the "insect apocalypse."
Although these declines have probably been taking place over a long period of time, the pace seems to be accelerating and the realization of just how large and widespread these losses have been is shocking. That certainly has been true in this case, coming face-to-face with a global catastrophe at a very local level. — New Hope Creek Biodiversity Survey
This decline in insects like moths can have huge impacts on other animals, according to Bradley.
“They form a really important layer of the ecosystem,” Bradley said. “They are a crucial food source for so many different animals. One of the biggest is birds, especially migrating birds. We know from data collected all over the world, and then locally in Durham and in the Triangle, bird species, especially migrating birds, are definitely on the decline. There's a lot of reasons for this, but loss of food is a really big factor.”
Bradley said that the specific causes for declining moth populations can be challenging to parse out, but contributing factors can include nearby development bringing herbicides and pesticides to an area, artificial light disorienting moths, and climate change disrupting ecosystems and compounding existing problems.
Bradley said that Durham County promotes moth conservation in the form of habitat restoration and supporting research, but he said he hopes Saturday's Moth Night event encourages even more public involvement in conservation efforts.
“We want to really get people involved, not only to learn about this issue, but to actually see how the science is done,” Bradley said. “Public involvement is really essential dealing with any conservation issue. We are really hoping this event will shed light on some of the challenges that moths and biodiversity in general are facing and show people ways to kind of reverse those trends.”
Moth Night is free to attend, but registration is required on the Durham County website.
