CONSERVATIONISTS are celebrating increased populations of butterflies on the county’s meadow nature reserves.
Staff and volunteers from the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust (WWT) have noticed the number of butterflies is significantly higher this summer after several poor years.
The recent wet spring and summers have been harsh on the insects but due to a dry and warm summer this year, numbers are much higher.
David, a volunteer for the WWT, counted 919 individual butterflies – 700 more than last year.
Rob Allen, the conservation officer responsible for a number of meadows in the south of the county, said it was great news.
“We’ve got a number of volunteers who walk defined routes on a weekly basis and count the number of butterflies they see. This gives us comparable data through the year as well as year-on-year.”
At Hill Court Farm the Trust is now leaving a field each year on rotation where a hay cut is not taken.
This means butterflies and other insects can complete their life cycle and it offers additional food for farmland birds during winter months.
Marbled white butterflies, Worcestershire’s beauty of the meadows, spend most their life as a caterpillar even through winter. They pupate either on the surface of the ground or buried in the top surface of soil or leaf litter.
Bringing heavy machinery onto wet soils, taking an early silage cut or not leaving a margin around the field when hay is taken, would kill most caterpillars and pupae.
Rob said since 1970, invertebrates had seen a 59 per cent decline, adding butterflies, bees, hoverflies and other insects were all important pollinators.
“We can help by ensuring we plant nectar and pollen rich plants, as well as trying to ensure we’ve got as many flowering throughout the year as possible,” he added.
“Farmers can create space for wildlife by leaving wide floristic margins on the edges of fields.”
The Trust is currently running a pollinator project where more than 20 farmers are working together to help insects on their farms and throughout the wider landscape.
Visit www.worcswildlifetrust.co.uk/courses for more information about the Trust’s work which is aimed at actively restoring and protecting wildlife and wild places in Worcestershire.
