Lulworth skipper leads the fightback as UK butterfly populations stage a resurgence
A RARE butterfly species restricted to a small section of the British coast has enjoyed a welcome boost in population levels – after numbers had been plummeting in recent years.
The Lulworth skipper is typically found along a 40-mile stretch of the Dorset coast and has suffered an average long-term population decline of 77 per cent since conservationists first began tracking it in 1992. But new figures from the 2019 butterfly season show a turnaround, with the species more than doubling in numbers in its natural habitat, between Swanage and Burton Bradstock on the south coast.
Thanks to an unusually warm and wet spring and summer in 2019, the Lulworth skipper species grew by 138 per cent – one of the biggest increases among all butterfly species last year.
The results come from the UK
Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, jointly conducted by Butterfly Conservation, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology and Joint Nature Conservation Committee). Prof Tom Brereton, associate director of monitoring and research at Butterfly Conservation, said: “It’s good news – it’s a welcome boost. “The species has been declining year on year for the past few years – every year has been the worst year ever. They still have a long way to go until they get back to the numbers we saw at the start of recording data but they’re not at risk of going extinct. They have a fairly continuous natural habitat on the Dorset coast.”
However, it is not only the Lulworth skipper that is resurgent – just over half of UK butterfly species showed higher population levels in 2019 compared with 2018.
The marbled white, a summer species primarily found in the southern half of England and Wales, enjoyed its best year in the monitoring scheme’s 44-year history, with numbers up by 66 per cent. The migrating species, the painted lady, native to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, saw a 1,993 per cent increase in the UK last summer.
Prof Brereton added: “The results are really encouraging and provide evidence that the overall rate of decline of butterflies is slowing and for some species being reversed.”