About the Event
Just how important are dung beetles in our livestock systems and what are they doing beyond removing dung? We generally don’t think of the tiny insect communities based around the dung piles in our fields and these include our native dung beetles. But what if we lose these beetles? What effect would it have on our livestock, pastures, soil and farm biodiversity? By gaining an understanding of dung beetles we can implement small changes in our management decisions that could have much wider benefits for biodiversity in general, the environment & livestock health including sustainable parasite plans to minimise chemical dependence.
We'll begin the day by introducing our native dung beetles with a presentation and a selection of specimens. The presentation will highlight the ecosystem functions of these economically important pastoral insects, their ecology, their threats and the potential practical changes in management required for their conservation.
After the presentation there will be a practical session enabling the opportunity for a dung dive out in the field. This will demonstrate how to identify and monitor the dung beetle populations by a simple surveying methodology enabling you to try for yourself on your own farm.
About the facilitator
- Sally-Ann Spence FRES FLS
Sally-Ann Spence is a scientist, presenter, farmer, entomologist and a Fellow of both the Royal Entomological Society and the Linnaean Society.
She specialises in dung beetles and pastureland biodiversity and founded the U.K. Dung Beetle Mapping Project accumulating species data. Her work with the project has seen her surveying field sites all over the U.K. including many outlying islands enabling her to study a multitude of grazing systems.
This practical experience has been translated into collaborative projects working on sustainable land management plans within the farming community to promote dung beetles as important bio-indicators for soil, pasture and livestock health. She was the plenary speaker at the 2025 European Grasslands conference in Finland and has worked on dung beetles within Swiss regenerative agricultural systems alongside dairy farming and herding in the alpine meadows across the Alps and Dolomites. She has also worked with Sami reindeer herders in the Arctic tundra regions.
Sally-Ann was awarded the British Entomological and Natural History Society’s gold medal for over two decades of promoting dung beetle awareness and her research into dung beetles and the livestock sector. A founding member of Dung Beetles for Farmers, which was formed to continue the awareness of this insect group and highlight their conservation, she provides dung beetle based workshops, training days, surveys and advisory services.
Sally-Ann owns and runs an educational research centre ‘Berrycroft Hub’ where she has both cattle and sheep.
As a passionate advocate of British farming and biodiversity, Sally-Ann does a great deal of scientific public outreach both at her centre on the farm, at various events and on all media platforms including television.
Web: www.berrycrofthub.com
Twitter: @SallyAnn_Spence / @berrycroft_hub
Facebook: @BerrycroftHub @SallyAnnSpence
ResearchGate/Instagram/TikTok/BlueSky/Threads/Mastodon/LinkedIn:@sallyannspence/ @berrycrofthub
Trustee: Yorkshire Natural History Museum.
Project Founder & Researcher:Dung Beetles for Farmers.
Project Founder & Researcher:Dung beetle UK Mapping Project.
BENHS Gold medal 2024
