FOURTEEN members joined Dinas Cross WI's February meeting on Zoom, the largest number to date.

After the business meeting, Tricia introduced Ant Rogers who is the biodiversity implementation officer for north Pembrokeshire.

In a well-illustrated talk, he spoke about his work and related it to Dinas and the surrounding area.

He spoke of the difficulties caused by the fragmentation of habitats which meant that groups of species are unable to join up with others of the same kind, making them in danger of extinction, examples being adders and dormice.

Wales, along with other areas, has failed in its international commitment he said and eight percent of the 5,000 known species in Wales are in danger of extinction due to factors such as climate change, pollution, environmental pressures etc, but on the positive side, public support for conservation is increasing in spite of reduced funding.

Ant then went on to speak of local projects such as the one in Spittal where each household is given a packet of wildflower seeds to plant in the garden and on the village green and the project in Wolfscastle to plant a tree for every child born in Pembrokeshire.

He encouraged individuals to send in data on what they see around and about such as frogspawn and butterflies, as there are some areas in the county with no data at all on wildlife.

Members contributed to the discussion with Tricia speaking about the large number of lapwings that had congregated on their land during the cold weather and the rare willow blister fungus which she had seen in their woodland. The meeting closed with Lynne's vote of thanks for what had been a most fascinating talk.