Ingham’s WORLD

BUTTERFLIES and the bad boys of rock are an unlikely combination. But Butterfly Conservation revealed this week that the Rolling Stones helped launch it on 50 years of success. In July 1969 the Stones staged a free concert for 250,000 screaming fans in London’s Hyde Park. To honour guitarist Brian Jones, who had died two days earlier, they released a snowstorm of 2,000 white butterflies. You can see them below almost forming a halo around Bill Wyman.

BC magazine Butterfly says the release did not go without a hitch. The stage was covered in dead butterflies and for weeks afterwards the survivors were accused of devastating allotments.

But as the Rolling Stones know better than most, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

The first chairman of the then British Butterfly Conservation Society, Thomas Frankland, wrote angrily to The Times, condemning “the wanton releasing of butterflies in a park without food plants in the centre of a large city”.

This was one-year-old BC’s first stab at publicity and it hasn’t looked back since. Now Britain’s favourite naturalist Sir David Attenborough is its president and it boasts 34,000 members.

Its annual Big Butterfly Count has involved 250,000 enthusiasts, making it the largest insect citizen science project in the world.

BC members have also gathered 60 million records, showing which of our 59 species are in trouble (most of them) and how to help.

From one full-time staff member in 1980 it now has 80 across the UK plus 35 reserves which offer havens for beautiful butterflies.

But back to Mr Jagger. He was already linked with butterflies before Hyde Park. After a 1967 drugs bust, Times editor William Rees-Mogg claimed Jagger had been treated harshly because of his fame, writing: “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”

Certainly not Butterfly Conservation. It just wants to make sure these delicate insects don’t fade away.