Celebrating 50 years of local biodiversity observation

[bhl_nicole]

New in the BHL Anniversary Series:

Celebrating 50 Years of a Field Naturalists Club Through its Newsletters

Our latest BHL at 20: Treasures from the Biodiversity Heritage Library blog post explores the remarkable 50-year history of the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club and its monthly newsletter, Castlemaine Naturalist.

Unlike many posts in this series, which focus on rare or historic books, this story highlights something quieter but equally important: the long-term value of community and local natural history observations.

Since 1976, the members of the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club have documented wildlife sightings, seasonal changes, conservation concerns, citizen science initiatives, excursions, and the evolving biodiversity of Central Victoria. Their newsletters provide an extraordinary record of environmental change across five decades.

Read the full story here: Celebrating 50 years of a field naturalists club through its newsletters

I’m particularly proud that these newsletters are accessible and discoverable on BHL. The digitisation of the Castlemaine Naturalist was undertaken by my team at BHL Australia as part of a local history grant we were awarded by Public Record Office Victoria.

@bhlau_jack and I travelled all over Victoria in 2024-2025 to speak to field naturalist clubs about their history and deep understanding of each of their local regions. The project resulted in the upload of (thus far) 42,496 pages of field naturalist publications and archives onto BHL.

To learn more, see Capturing the history of Victoria’s Field Naturalists Clubs.

[rdmpage]

This feels like an important part of the biodiversity literature that might otherwise be overlooked if not for BHL. Apart from the history (both of nature and naturalists) that it captures, there is a potential treasure trove of information in these publications. For example, the notion of an “insect apocalypse” was driven by a long term study done by local entomological society in Germany Entomologischer Verein Krefeld.

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in...

The work @bhl_nicole and @bhlau_jack have done also shows what happens when motivated people have funding.

[bhl_nicole]

It also demonstrates what really motivated people can do with tiny parcels of money. The grant that funded this entire project – working with the publications of 7 field regional naturalist clubs (and one “friends of” group) – was less than AUD 15,000. However, the project slotted into the existing CSIRO-funded BHL Australia workflow.