MANY of the UK’s common and garden butterfly species could be in decline, conservationists warned today as they launched the nation’s biggest count of the insects.
Wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation is urging the public to spend quarter of an hour in a garden, park or field this week and make a note of the species of any butterfly they see there as well as day-flying moths such as hummingbird hawk-moths.
The conservation group hopes the information will help build up a better picture of the fortunes of the country’s butterflies and give an indication of the wider health of our nature world.
Butterfly Conservation said that seven out of 10 species of the insect are in decline in the UK and half are threatened with extinction.
Numbers have hit an all-time low in the past three years as bad summer weather compounded long-term problems caused by loss and degradation of habitat and changes to land management – such as more intensive farming or more conifer plantations – in the past 50 years.
Richard Fox, surveys manager at Butterfly Conservation, said more common butterflies such as red admirals and peacock butterflies are much more mobile than rare species, but could also be affected by changes to their habitat.
Species like the meadow brown and small blue are much less widespread than they would have been 50 years ago.
For more information about the count, log on to www.bigbutterflycount.org
