In July the Lord Howe Island Museum and Australian Museum as part of Conservation Volunteers program ran a Beetle Week. Dr Chris Reid from A. M. and I led the week surveying beetles at 15 sites on the island. Visitors and locals enjoyed getting out in the forest learning about the island’s beetles from. The focus was on the larger beetles that had been collected before rats arrived in 1918, but seem to be absent from the island since. Three of these large species were located on Blackburn Island which is rodent free, confirming the negative impact rodents have had, and are still having, on the island’s invertebrate fauna.
