English Heritage, warned yesterday that what has been a perennial headache is to become worse, with the estimated numbers of household moths at its properties doubling in the past five years.
English Heritage spends £1 million a year on cleaning its properties and their collection of 500,000 historic artefacts, and has a dedicated team tasked with spotting and eradicating moth infestations. The charity, which has detected the appearance of the monopis species, also known as the Pale Backed Clothes Moth, at its properties for the first time, has now launched a project to measure the spread and density of the moth population around the country. Amber Xavier-Rowe, English Heritage’s head of collections conservation, said: ‘If we stopped cleaning our properties now we would see a huge amount of damage from moths within 12 months. It’s a constant battle that we have to catch them early before they start damaging fittings and furnishings.’
Visitors to the charity’s properties are now being asked to take home with them a free moth trap to catch them in their own homes. The cardboard and the glue trap is impregnated with the female sex pheromone of the clothes moth – so that it attracts and catches male clothes moths. Although small, the moths are visible to the naked eye and can be counted. Those taking part in the survey can post their results on the English Heritage website and the information will enable the spread of moths across England to be mapped, helping the charity decide where to concentrate its conservation efforts. English Heritage, which reopened many of its sites to the public this week following its annual spring-clean, also hopes the results of the survey will help researchers build up a comprehensive database of the moth population, helping them eventually to find ways of tackling the problem.
Read The Telegraph article
Find out about English Heritage’s ‘Operation Clothes Moth’
