Scottish conservation group builds world's largest insect hotel

March 31 (UPI) -- A Scottish conservation group earned a Guinness World Record by constructing an insect hotel measuring more than 7,000 cubic feet.

Conservation group Highland Titles used felled sitka spruce, masonry bricks, bamboo canes, wood chips, forest bark, wildflower seeds, clay pipes and strawberry netting to build a 7,059.4-cubic-foot insect hotel on the Highland Titles Nature Reserve in Duror.

A Guinness World Records adjudicator visited the site and confirmed the insect hotel, which already houses a variety of species, took the world record from a 3,157-cubic-foot insect hotel built in Warsaw, Poland.

"This record-breaking initiative is about the environmental message," Highland Titles CEO Douglas Wilson said in a news release. "We bought this land in 2006 when it was a poorly performing commercial forestry plantation of non-native Sitka spruce."

Wilson said the area was "inappropriately planted in the late 1980s with no thought or consideration given to biodiversity."

"Using these same trees for something that puts nature first symbolizes that the world has changed, and we hope our efforts will inspire others. We'd be delighted if someone beat our record in the future," Wilson said.