大象传媒

The North York Moors is a very varied habitat: grassland, heather-moor land, peat-bogs, streams and forests. Such variety supports a high number of rare butterflies, ones you won鈥檛 find in your garden.

These butterflies have very special requirements, and the fact that their numbers are declining, is an indicator that we鈥檙e not looking after the countryside as well as we might.

Conservationists are increasingly aware that the most effective way of protecting endangered species is to manage habitats in such a way that conditions remain ideal.

Pexton Moor. Photo: David Wainwright

The wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation has joined up with the North York Moors National Park to manage sites by removing scrub and overgrown brambles, the things that are choking out the plants that the butterflies lay their eggs on.

Unless additional work is undertaken, it is likely that further sites will be lost. Many of the remaining sites support only a handful of butterflies, which means that these populations are extremely vulnerable to predation, poor weather etc.

The Duke of Burgundy is one of the main priorities of the wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation on the North York Moors. This species lays its eggs on cowslips and primroses and is restricted to unfertilised, lime-rich grasslands and woodland clearings.

Although never common, the butterfly used to be found at around 30 locations centred around Helmsley, Pickering and Kirkbymoorside. In recent decades, the number of sites it occupies has dwindled to around a dozen, mainly in the Helmsley area.

This is a big concern because any sites that are lost are unlikely to be recolonised on account of their isolation from their neighbours.

In response to these concerns, Butterfly Conservation and the North York Moors National Park are working in partnership in order to identify potentially-suitable sites near to the surviving colonies. This could function as both additional breeding areas and as 鈥渟tepping stones鈥� between the surviving colonies.

Some of this work will need volunteers to monitor butterfly populations, clear scrub, grow primroses and cowslips (to be transplanted onto potential sites) and even rearing butterflies in captivity, which will then be reintroduced to suitable sites.