It is so easy to become despondent about species loss in our modern world, but The Good News Network have shared two Butterfly success stories in the UK to raise the spirits. Both of the following stories were reported by Andy Corbley:
As GNN has reported before, Britain loves her butterflies, and this black-veined beauty is getting special attention as it prepares to re-establish itself across the island.
Extinct in the UK since the early 20th century due to land-use changes and habitat loss, the black-veined white butterfly seems set for a return thanks to a reintroduction project.
The work has been organized by the Knepp Wildland Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Britain’s most famous rewilding project on Knepp Estate in West Sussex, where a struggling landowner turned his family’s failing ancestral farm into one of the most biodiverse places in England.
The mosaic of newly-naturalized wooded grasslands teems with animals, including large concentrations of endangered birds like nightingales, and insect species like the purple emperor butterfly.
The black-veined white butterfly is still widespread across continental Europe, and for the reintroduction program larvae were flown to Knepp in special containers that would allow them to overwinter on the estate and acclimatize to conditions in Britain.
Early signs suggest the insects are doing well, growing as would be expected on hawthorn and blackthorn shrubs that make up their diet and habitat. This is especially encouraging since, according to Bird Guides UK, several attempts to reintroduce this butterfly have failed.
Prior to the importation, Knepp Wildland Trust carried out extensive climate and environment studies to ascertain whether conditions at the estate and across Britain more broadly would be appropriate for these Lepidopterans after such a long absence.
If all goes the plan, future operations will try to connect the population to ancestral hotspots like Devon and the south coast.
The butterfly-mad British are celebrating what seems to be a permanent return of this large and spectacular species after Dutch elm disease killed it off from the island.
Unlike the small tortoiseshell butterfly, the large tortoiseshell butterfly hasn’t been a resident of the UK since the 1960s, but after several years of continuous widespread sightings, it’s clearly no longer just a migratory visitor.
Indeed, having been seen in Kent, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, Hampshire, and Cornwall, Britain’s Butterfly Conservation has officially designated it as the 60th ‘resident’ species in the UK.
“The signs are really positive, which is lovely,” said Richard Fox, head of science for Butterfly Conservation.
“It is resident and therefore it is another species to add to Britain’s total, which is good news. It’s not well-established enough yet to say it’s definitely back for good and will be widespread across multiple landscapes—we’re still in that zone of uncertainty at the moment, but there are exciting signs.”
Lepidopterists, or butterfly biologists, believe that Britain represents the northern-most part of the animal’s range, and with Europe experiencing higher than recent-historic-average temperatures, this makes it an even more ideal home than during the 20th century.
According to the Guardian, sightings have been reported as far back as 2006, but since butterflies can and often are migratory, it wasn’t at the time possible to say the animal was recolonizing its former haunts. Rather, it was more likely a seasonal visitor.
Then, in 2020, sightings of the first wild caterpillars in Dorset confirmed the animal was back and breeding in the wild, and as it spread out across the surrounding, lower English counties, gracefully returned to the resident list.
Butterfly Conservation are urging residents of these areas to log details of any sighting of the large tortoiseshell on iRecord, a citizen-science application which is helping build a picture of the expanding range of the insect.