Bringing rare city butterflies back home
THE landscape of Manchester must have looked very different 150 years ago.
In 1869, cotton mills and coalfields would have dominated the landscape, rows and rows of terrace houses would be the homes of the workers.
Another difference would be the abundance of wildlife in our countryside.
There would be more woodland and hedgerows and many of our mosses would still be lovely and damp.
It was also close to the end of the Manchester Argus butterfly fluttering over our mosslands, where food and pollination plants like cross-leaved heath and hare’s tail cottongrass could be found in abundance.
So around 150 years ago, drainage of those mosslands for farming and industry, and not forgetting peat extraction for fuel and gardening, meant this beautiful butterfly became extinct.
Its cousins survived in Lancashire but they had a different name – the large heath – even the Mancunian name was lost.
This week the Wildlife Trust and Chester Zoo are beginning a project to capture some of those Lancashire butterflies on Winmarleigh Moss and return them to Astley Moss in Greater Manchester.
Let me stress this will not harm the Lancashire population but it will be the start of a campaign to bring the butterflies back to a number of sites in Greater Manchester and Warrington.
Over the coming weeks egg-laden females will be taken from the moss and dispatched carefully to the zoo.
Here the mums will lay eggs, which will pupate and, in the summer of 2020, the large heath butterflies will be released on Astley Moss and Risley Moss.
It will only be a matter of time before they pick up the Manc accent and we can truly say that the Manchester Argus has returned.
A reintroduction like this has already been successful at Heysham Moss.
This whole thing may sound simple but a lot of organisations have been involved in preparing mosses and planting the right plants to create a home for our butterflies.
And the reintroduction programme, involving many other plants and insects, has been funded by Veolia at a cost of more than £250,000 with the Casey Group adding another £25,000.
To support the work of the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. Text WILD09 with the amount you want to donate to 70070.