Join Michael Sarill of Project Noah at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 14, for a virtual program about the
popular online global community of nature enthusiasts and its collaboration with National Moth Week,
which starts July 17.
Sponsored by the East Brunswick Public Library in partnership with the Friends of the East Brunswick
Environmental Commission (FriendsEBEC), the program will be available on Zoom and the library’s
Youtube channel. It is free and open to the public. Registration is suggested but not required. Go to
this link to register and find details on accessing the presentation.
Michael will lead aspiring citizen scientists through Project Noah’s Moths of the World mission, which
provides a platform for uploading and publishing photos, creating a personal nature journal and
learning about the natural world on projectnoah.org, as well as its social media platforms. He will also
walk the library through a new video created by Project Noah Nature School on how to go mothing.
He will be joined by Liti Haramaty of Friends EBEC and co-founder of National Moth Week, who will
discuss the upcoming 10th annual observance, how to register an event and how to navigate the newly
designed website and video library with tips and demonstrations of mothing.
National Moth Week shines a light on often unheralded moths, calling attention to their beauty,
extraordinary diversity and essential role in the natural world as pollinators and a food source for other
creatures. It will be observed July 17-25, marking its 10th year.
It was started by Haramaty and David Moskowitz of FriendsEBEC in 2012 and quickly became an
international citizen science project engaging people of all ages and abilities in observing and
documenting moths in their natural habitats in backyards, parks, neighborhoods and other outdoor
venues. Since its founding, public and private mothing events have been registered in all 50 states and
more than 90 countries around the world. (Register here)
Project Noah is an award-winning software platform designed to help people connect with the natural
world and learn about wildlife. It enables amateurs and professionals alike to create and share _________________________________________________________________________________________
National Moth Week (nationalmothweek.org) is a project of the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission,
a 501c3 organization • 9 Camelot Drive, East Brunswick, NJ 08816 • friendsebec.com
multimedia nature journals to collect important ecological data and help preserve global biodiversity.
Project Noah has been a partner organization of National Moth Week since 2012.
Michael Sarill leads product development and partnerships for Project Noah. He earned his bachelor’s
degree in philosophy from Brown University and completed the Beahrs Environmental Leadership
Program at UC Berkeley. He is passionate about wildlife and biodiversity conservation and is excited to
explore ways for people to live in harmony with nature. Prior to Project Noah, he built a wildlife game
called Baboon.
This program is part of the Option Green lecture series hosted by the East Brunswick Library in
partnership with FriendsEBEC.

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The richly diverse moth population of Sri Lanka has a great friend in Nuwan Chathuranga Jayawardana.  With an interest in moths and butterflies going back to childhood, Nuwan has spent much of his adult career photographing and documenting the South Asian island nation’s hundreds of moth species, even authoring a book on them.

Nuwan also has been organizing National Moth Week events every year, so it was completely natural that he should take on the role of country coordinator.

“It’s great to work with National Moth Week as the country coordinator for Sri Lanka,” Nuwan said. “I have participated in NMW since 2012 and started studying moths in 2010.

He and his wife, Anushamalee Jayawardana, are the authors of A Handbook to the Moths of Sri Lanka, Vol.01, published last year. “It is the first-ever guide to the moths of Sri Lanka since Frederic Moore’s work, The Lepidoptera of Ceylon (1882-87),” he said.

He also created the Moths of Sri Lanka on the iNaturalist platform in 2013, which includes data for NMW each year. The project has nearly 6,000 observations, 250 members and 700 moth species.

Nuwan has worked throughout Sri Lanka as a researcher for several research projects and surveys, in relation to Lepidopteran fauna.

He is an avid nature photographer and is currently engaged in providing voluntary online support for moth identifications in social media and citizen science projects such as iNaturalist, India Biodiversity Portal and Project Noah, which are all NMW partner organizations.

He also is one of the administrators of the Facebook group, “Butterfly interest group of Sri Lanka”.

Nuwan joined the Department of Wildlife Conservation in 2015 and presently works at DWC head office. He works tirelessly in order to safeguard the flora and fauna of Sri Lanka using his profession while using it as an opportunity to widen his knowledge as a lepidopterist.

For this year’s NMW, Nuwan is planning to hold a competition on iNaturalist. “The person who records the highest number of species during National Moth Week will win a copy of my moth guide,” he said.

Participants in the competition will have to register their moth-watching event with NMW. He plans to reach out via social media. Sounds like a great way to engage more people in mothing!

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Jacob Gorneau was 15 when he came to a moth night in East Brunswick, NJ, in 2013. He and his dad traveled more than 150 miles from upstate New York to meet the NMW team, who’d started the observance just a year earlier. By then, however, Jacob already was a valuable contributor to NMW’s success.

“I had learned about National Moth Week through a citizen science site, Project Noah, (an NMW partner organization) and was able to work as a liaison between Project Noah and NMW for its first year in 2012,” he said.

Jacob’s fascination with moths and the natural world began early. He was hooked after seeing a Black Witch moth on a family trip to Florida. “I couldn’t believe the moth was as large as the geckos near it! I think that was the first time that I became thoroughly enamored with moths.”

To further his interest in insects, he’d challenge himself to stay outside until he found something he’d never seen before. (Sounds like a great way to interest kids in nature.)

“What became clear quickly was how easy it was to see a new moth, spider or any other kind of arthropod,” he said. “The more I learned about how diverse arthropods are, the more I got interested!”

Jacob helped spread the word about NMW to other groups and events. His valuable and growing knowledge about moths helped NMW become more widely known. In 2013, he was invited to become the youngest member of the NMW team.

“I think National Moth Week is an important cause, because looking for moths is an activity for everyone, and learning more about them invites people to have a more open mind when it comes to other organisms – like snakes and spiders – that might be surrounded by a cloud of misconceptions,” he said.

“Mothing is great because all it requires is leaving an outside light on or having an inexpensive mothing setup, and nature will come to you. A lot of common misunderstandings about moths and other arthropods come from a place of fear, and I think the best tool against this fear is education. The outdoors is a great classroom”

This spring, Jacob graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., with a degree in entomology. He will begin graduate studies this fall at San Francisco State University through the California Academy of Sciences. “I hope to pursue a career in academia that incorporates a lot of evolutionary biology and collections-based museum work.”

National Moth Week congratulates Jacob on his graduation and looks forward to many more years of collaboration. 

During NMW 2018, a variety of moths were spotted on Project Noah throughout the world! Here are a few of our favorites below:

Project Noah has a new user interface! Check out the updated website and submit your moths to the Moths of the World mission today!

Register for National Moth Week 2019 here.

“They were so beautiful and so many beautiful colors,” she says of Costa Rica’s moths.

In 2014, Gylma became the first person in her country to participate in National Moth Week. Her enthusiasm continues to grow, and this year, she
became the country coordinator for Costa Rica. She says she is determined to share her enthusiasm with her fellow Costa Ricans.

“I have advertised in all my clubs all about nature, insects and animals, and have talked to lots of people about our National Moth Week,” she said.

Gylma said her location near the town of San Ramon, adjacent to Tanaca National Park, with a pasture and garden with native trees, plants and flowers, is ideal for mothing, “I have a nice property close to San Ramon, but far enough to be in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I just turn the lights on and everything comes to me. A private event – me, my camera and all those lovely moths…and insects too.”

She began posting photos on the Project Noah site in 2012 and has about 619 postings, but says her own album contains some 300,000 photos. “I love it that you can always have a permanent record of all the spottings you place there, and there are so many helpful people to help you with identifications.”

Gylma’s love of nature goes back to her childhood when she boarded at a convent school run by nuns. She would play “explorer” on the convent’s large property, leading her friends to a creek to watch eggs develop into tadpoles and then frogs.

She has always shared her love of animals with her family, which includes her four children, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild. “When they were growing up, sometimes we had at least 15 pets – turtles, iguanas, snakes, chameleons, cats. No moths, but I taught my family how to love animals.”

— Sandy Lanman

Chris Taklis participated in the past in NMW and have been promoting the project on Greek social media pages. This is what Chris sent us for his bio:

I am a Marine and Conservation Biologist. I love sharks mostly of all the animals and I love to participate as a volunteer and in citizen science projects. Also, I am one of the founders of BiodiversityGR citizen science conservation organization.

As for taxonomy, I am helping other people usually through Facebook, Project Noah, and iNaturalist to identify their species photos for almost 10 years.

I like the colors of the moths and I wish to see in future India’s moths (which I find them the most fascinating in the world).