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Record numbers of rare fritillaries in Devon30/04/2011 02:35:55Warm weather brings out pearl bordered fritillaries early April 2011: A survey has revealed record numbers of a nationally rare butterfly - seen earlier than usual this year due to recent warm weather. More than 300 pearl bordered fritillaries have been recorded at Devon Wildlife Trust's Marsland nature reserve. The rare butterflies were out earlier than usual, with 15 recorded on April 9-10 by national butterfly expert Roger Harding.
A full survey - which found a total of 305 of the rare butterflies - was undertaken on ten days later by Devon Wildlife Trust's senior nature reserves officer Gary Pilkington. The previous highest count - 288 - was recorded more than ten years ago. Pearl bordered fritillaries were counted in many areas of the site which had been cut and coppiced by Devon Wildlife Trust staff over the winter, with funding from Viridor. Gary has been managing the Marsland reserve for more than 20 years to improve the wooded valley's glades and pastures for the benefit of these rare butterflies. ‘We now know what these butterflies need to thrive here' Gary Pilkington said: ‘Over the years we have learnt exactly what pearl bordered fritillaries need to thrive here. It includes appropriate bracken control, scrub management and providing the open ground they love. ‘They are readily responding to our long-term and careful management of this site, in particular to us opening up areas, especially where their food plant, viola, and main nectaring plant, bugle, heave on the woodland floor. To see them in big numbers in coppice - mainly hazel with some birch and oak - rather than their traditional haunt of bracken slopes is especially pleasing. A spectacular sight Other butterflies recorded at Marsland on April 9-10 included four comma, more than 100 orange tip, 50 speckled wood, ten holly blue, one red admiral, one small tortoiseshell, one green veined white, five small white and two wall brown. Management work at Marsland is carried out by Devon Wildlife Trust staff, local contractors and volunteers who help to remove gorse, willow, alder and other scrub in the habitats best suited to the butterflies. Devon Wildlife Trust is leading the way with improving habitat for pearl bordered fritillaries, and increasing numbers. It has three other sites where reserves officers are undertaking the same simple and effective management approach and reaping the rewards.
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Sorry to disagree with you but the British landscape has not been truly natural since the neolithic or as it is becoming apparant the mesolithic.
Humans have changed the landscape for thousands of years. By the end of the neolithic much of the native woods had gone. Deforestation by humans is the reason you have places like Dartmoor and heathlands. The broads are entirely man made. And yet we have a wide variety of plants and animals in this country. Like it or not that variety is due to our intervention.
Modern farming practices are having a detrimental effect unfortunatly.
As far as Europe is concerned do remember they have more space. Europe also has managed landscapes. The UK is an island. Less space.
Also how many people would appreciate our wildlife becoming extinct because you wont some mythical wild wood.
It is a myth that prehistoric man was doing nothing to the environment.
Archeology is finding that our ancestors had a much bigger impact than was once thought. And that impact goes back to before the introduction of farming.
The present British landscape is a product of man. Even those tribes who still live by hunting and gathering change the landscape they live in. And so do other animals. Elephants are a well known example as are Beavers. I think you will find that all life on Earth changes it's environment to suite itself. All humans have done is change the environment to benifit themselves. We are aware now that we have caused destruction to other species and some people are trying to do something about it. The thing is that some of those species adapted tehmselves to man made environments. Shall we condem those species because they are not in a so called natural environment.
Posted by: Amanda | 09 May 2011 19:36:37
in persecuting natural processes in a "simple and effective management approach". Just gardening.
The most unnatural conservation policy possible
www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/unnatural_policy.htm
Posted by: Mark Fisher | 01 May 2011 10:34:37