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The Virtual Fauna of Lakeland website is named after the monumental work,
A Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland, written by the Rev. H.
A. Macpherson in 1892. This web site is a natural progression of the work
that he began over 100 years ago. Macpherson’s Lakeland faunal area included
most of modern day Cumbria and this site is concerned with Cumbrian wildlife.
Cumbria Biological Data Network is a partnership of organisations
in Cumbria which are working together to develop and exchange information on the
wildlife of Cumbria for conservation and educational purposes. Other member organisations
are Natural England, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Cumbria County Council, Lake District
National Park Authority, Environment Agency and Cumbria Naturalists Union.
Matthew Grose is the Biological Data Officer for CBDN, based at Tullie House
and can be contacted for detailed searches of the database.
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Title page: A Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland
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Hugh Alexander Macpherson was a Victorian clergyman
whose name still resonates among the naturalists of Cumbria today. He lived in this
county for less than two decades and yet in that time he wrote and published prolifically
on the natural history of the area, culminating in his magnum opus: ‘A
Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland ’
Macpherson’s legacy can be seen not only in his published work, which remains
of interest and relevance to naturalists today, but also in the continuing work
of the local institutions and organisations that he helped establish and inspire.
His passion and zeal for natural history led him to campaign for and develop a natural
history museum at Tullie Housein
Carlisle . He also fostered and became the first President of Carlisle Natural History
Society. In addition, his ground-breaking work on the natural history of Lakeland
was the inspiration behind one of the earliest local biological records centres,
established at Carlisle Museum in 1902.
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Hugh Alexander Macpherson
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Acknowledgements
We are very pleased to acknowledge the support of Cumbria County Council and English
Nature in the development of this site.
The information is drawn from the Cumbria Biological Records Database at Tullie
House Museum using the RECORDER 3.3 software developed by JNCC. Species distribution
maps have been produced using the DMAP programme developed by Dr. Alan Morton.
Thanks also to the people who have allowed us to use their photographs on the site:
Ian Armstrong, Nick Franklin, David Hickson, Duncan Lawie, Barry Marrs, Tristan
Reid and Keith Temple. We would be pleased to hear from anyone with good digital
photos of wildlife that we could use to improve the site.
Very many individuals and organisations have freely contributed information to the
Cumbria Biological Records Database at Tullie House Museum. We have attempted to
acknowledge all sources of records for each of the wildlife groups covered in the
species pages of this site.The parish pages contain much additional information
from sources too numerous to mention individually. There are however some major
contributors of data who deserve particular mention. These are the Aquatic Beetles
Recording Scheme, Biological Records Centre, Butterfly Conservation, Cumberland
Bat Group, Cumbria Bird Club, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Dipterists Forum, English
Nature, Environment Agency, Red Alert North West, Westmorland & Furness Bat
Group and of course the network of local natural history societies active across
the county.
A number of individual naturalists in the county have personally provided very significant
numbers of records. The following people have each contributed over 5,000 records:
Dr. N.L. Birkett, Dr. B. Colville, E.F. Hancock, S.M. Hewitt, D.W. Kydd, G.R. Naylor,
R. Petely-Jones, R.W.J. Read. Thanks also to the various County Recorders who collate
and contribute records to the database: David Atty & John Read (beetles), David
Clarke (dragonflies) Barry Colville (slugs and snails), Cumberland and Westmorland
& Furness Bat Groups (bats), Cumbria Bird Club (birds), Geoff Naylor (butterflies),
Rob Petley-Jones (moths) and Neil Robinson (ants, bees and wasps). Tullie House
also collates records of mammals and various invertebrate groups directly.
Finally, special thanks are due to the members of Carlisle Natural History Society
who have given their time to enter records onto the database over the last 15 years
or so and to other volunteers who have been of enormous help in extracting information
from the collections in the Museum. They are, Geoff Naylor, Edna Marper, Dorothy
Iveson, John Read, Tony Tipling, John Martin, Tom Dias, Will Higgs, Peter Harris
and Tony Rigby.
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