IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT THE BRITISH ENTOMOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY RESPONSE TO COVID-19

Update posted on 02 October 2020 at 17:00.

We wish to continue to assure all of our Members, and everybody else involved with our Society, that we are monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic continuously and following government advice and guidelines. Your health and safety remains of foremost importance to us and your patience, assistance, co-operation and continuing support are very much appreciated as we face this challenging time together.

We look forward to resuming our Events programme at the appropriate time, but the current situation would still suggest that indoor meetings will not be able to restart until the spring of 2021 at the earliest.  The Field Meetings programme will resume in 2021.

The Society’s Annual Meeting, (adjourned on 28 March) was held on-line using the conferencing facility Zoom on Saturday 12 September 2020.  Our thanks to all who attended and made this new style of meeting for the Society such a success.

As previously reported, the Society’s Annual Exhibition will also now take place as a Virtual Exhibition, which will be hosted on this, the Society’s website, in a new ‘Members’ Only’ section.  We encourage as many Members as possible to submit photographs of exhibits they would otherwise have presented in person at the Exhibition, along with any photographs of living insects they would like to show.  The full details as to how to do this can be found on the Events page of this website.

Entries for the Virtual Exhibition need to be submitted by e-mail before midnight on 23 October.  The Virtual Exhibition will go live on the website from Saturday 7 November and close at midnight on Friday 20 November and will be available for any Member to view during this time.

As in previous years, we will be judging the Best exhibit of specimens and the Best insect photograph or set of photographs with prizes awarded to the two winners.  The announcement of the winners will be made live on the afternoon of Saturday 7 November at the end of the Brad Ashby Memorial Lecture which will be delivered using Zoom.  This year’s talk will be given by Dr Ian Wallace – the 2019 NBN Terrestrial Wildlife Recorder of the Year. Further details are being sent to Members by e-mail and are also posted on the Events pages of this website.  Again we would encourage members to sign up to this talk which promises to be very special and which is open to members of the BENHS and also the London Natural History Society.

So in summary, all Members are welcome to visit this year’s Virtual Exhibition from 7 to 20 November by logging on to the Member’s Only pages of the website and are invited to submit virtual exhibits (ie digital photographs) by 23 October.  In addition, the first day of the Virtual Exhibition will also feature the Brad Ashby lecture delivered live via Zoom for Members.  We hope you will both participate in and enjoy, these events.  

Our experiences of providing services to Members in a digital format, as described above, is informing our approach to exploring options for an online programme of entomological lectures.

Please be re-assured that regular building checks are being undertaken on the Society’s headquarters at Dinton Pastures. The safe keeping of our heritage collections and assets are pre-eminently important to us. Unfortunately, any additional access to the building is suspended until further notice.

Society business is continuing and is being conducted ‘virtually’ through Finance, Communication, and Building and Heritage Assets Committees. Full Council Meetings are continuing to be held every six weeks.

The Society’s Journal will be published and distributed as normal. Work on future Society publications is ongoing. Membership applications will also continue to be processed. Where possible, e-mails will be monitored and any urgent enquiries should be forwarded to the addresses listed at https://www.benhs.org.uk/contact/

Thank you for maintaining your commitment to the British Entomological and Natural History Society. We will keep you regularly updated through our website and via social media and e-mail. If you are a Member of our Society, please do forward your e-mail contact details to us if we do not already have them.

We hope you are finding ways to continue our shared objective of promoting the conservation and further understanding of British Insects and Natural History.