British Conservationists Collect New Forest Cicada Eggs from French Base

The BBC reported that British conservationists collected eggs of the New Forest cicada from the Académie militaire de Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan in Brittany, France, last month and transported them to Paultons Park Zoo in Hampshire. The Species Recovery Trust team used specialist ultrasound equipment to locate the insects and their eggs hidden inside bracken stems on the 5,300-hectare site near Rennes.

Researchers gathered 20 stems bearing scars from egg deposition.

The academy's woodland and grassland habitats resemble those of the New Forest. Pete Hughes, a volunteer with the trust who joined the expedition, said the work felt like a James Bond operation. "We went creeping around the grounds of this military base using ultrasound detectors to try to hear the male cicadas singing," he stated.

At the zoo, staff prepared miniature vases to sustain the stems while keeping any hatched nymphs out of water. The New Forest cicada, Cicadetta montana, was once widespread across the national park but has not been confirmed there since the 1990s. In 2023 the trust secured funding from Natural England to test reintroduction using continental European populations.

Immature cicadas spend four to 10 years underground before emerging. Charlotte Carne, programmes manager at the Species Recovery Trust, said the captive rearing phase is revealing details of the insect's life cycle that remain unclear to European experts.

"We are now able to look forward to a time when we can once again walk through the New Forest in summer and hear hundreds of cicadas singing their hearts out," she stated.