Update from the NMW team

National Moth Week (www.nationalmothweek.org) is only 1 day away! Thanks to Fran R. for a suggestion to reach out to the Nevada State Entomologist because his agency (NVDA) is now running two light nights next week in Elko County making registered locations in 49 states! Where are the North Dakota moth’ers? Registrations are now coming in like crazy and it is hard for the small group of us at NMW to keep up with the website maps and emails. New registrations yesterday were from India, NY, Hawaii, Michigan, NJ and Pennsylvania. There are now 250 locations around the world next week and many have multiple moth night events (there is also a day-time caterpillar walk, an early morning walk to look at the impact of artificial lights on moths, presentations at public libraries and even a week-long course on moths). The types of events are just so diverse and it is amazing. Media coverage is also going crazy with newspaper articles all over the place and loads of websites featuring NMW (just Google National Moth Week and look at all the sites that come up). National Geographic is also running an announcement on their website, The Nature Conservancy will be featuring it all next week on their website and NPR will be attending a few moths nights around the country. BioQuip, a NMW supporter is even sending an announcement in all of their orders. The amount of interest can also be seen in the NMW website that has well over 175000 page visits and is getting more than 500 new visits a day and the Facebook page that reached more than 50000 people last week alone. There is simply no doubt that NMW will be focusing much needed attention on moths and biodiversity and raising environmental awareness across a huge broad front. A big KUDOS to all the moth’ers on this Facebook page for the inspiration to start NMW! And for anyone not registered yet, it isn’t too late and only takes a few seconds on the website. Happy mothing everybody!