WILDLIFE : Freezing weather brings fresh perils for British species
English: An illustration from British Entomology by John Curtis. Hamearis lucina (Duke-of-Burgundy Fritillary). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) Deutsch: Schlüsselblumen-Würfelfalter (Hamearis lucina) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Public urged to help save mammals, birds and insects whose habitats and food supplies have come under pressure. The Guardian reports
Britain‘s continued freezing weather is threatening ever greater numbers of wild animals, birds and insects across the country, experts have warned. The current cold spell – one of the longest on record – is particularly affecting creatures that are already struggling to survive the loss of their habitats and changes in climate.
Examples include the hedgehog, which has already suffered a devastating loss of numbers over the past three decades and is now badly affected by the cold weather. In addition, threatened reptiles such as the grass snake and slowworm require sunny, warm conditions when they emerge from hibernation. Such a prospect is still remote, say meteorologists.
Even birds such as the barn owl and tawny owl are facing problems. “Owls like the tawny and barn rely on hearing their prey – mainly voles, shrews and mice – as they scuttle across the ground. But in snow or hardened ground that is very difficult,” said Ben Andrew of the RSPB. “As a result, owls need to hunt during the daytime, leaving them open to attacks by other birds or collisions with motor vehicles.”
Wild animals can deal with harsh weather, experts acknowledge, but the length of the current cold spell is unprecedented, with forecasters warning that temperatures are unlikely to return to their average level until the end of April. By that time, a great deal of harm could have been done to the nation’s wildlife. Frogs have spawned only for their ponds to have frozen over, while many plants and insects are emerging late, which has a knock-on effect on species that feed on them.
Storms are also having an unwelcome impact. “Seabirds along the east coast of the UK – in particular, puffins – are struggling to catch fish in the current conditions,” said Andrew. “They become malnourished and weak and eventually die and are being washed up on shores in their hundreds. Guillemots, razorbills, cormorants and gulls are also affected. In addition, small birds such as goldcrests, long-tailed tits and wrens, which mainly feed on small insects, are finding the current cold weather particularly tricky.”
For hedgehogs, the prolonged cold weather has had a particularly severe impact. “Many animals that went into hibernation in November or December last year are still sleeping,” said Fay Vass, chief executive of the Hedgehog Preservation Society. “The weather is not yet warm enough to wake them. Usually they would be up and about by now.”
The problem was that the longer a hedgehog remained asleep, the weaker it got and the less energy an animal had to restore itself to wakefulness, added Vass. “It depends just how healthy and well-fed an animal was when it went into hibernation. But in general, the longer the cold weather lasts, the greater the number of animals that will not wake up at all.”
The problems facing those hedgehogs that had already woken up from hibernation were no better, said Vass. “They are having a hard time finding any food and we are getting increasing numbers of reports of animals appearing in gardens in daytime desperate for something to eat.”
In the 1980s, there were estimated to be around 30m hedgehogs in the UK. Today, there are fewer than a million, thanks to major erosion of the animals’ habitats. The impact of this year’s long winter and the prospect of continued grim conditions only worsens prospects for this once ubiquitous mammal.
For the nation’s butterflies the situation is less perilous, at least for now. However, continued icy weather could have serious implications. “April is wake-up time for butterflies,” said Richard Fox, surveys manager at Butterfly Conservation. “If they do that when it is still freezing, that could have very serious consequences for their ability to get food. Many could starve if these conditions persist.”
Species that will be the worst affected include the high brown fritillary (Fabriciana adippe). This is Britain’s most threatened butterfly, found in only a few scattered locations in the south and west of England. “Persistent cold weather is only going to makes things even harder for the high brown,” added Fox.
Other species of butterfly that are seriously threatened in the UK and are vulnerable to continued cold weather include the Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) and the pearl-bordered fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne).
Experts stress that the public can help. The RSPB has urged householders to keep bird feeders regularly topped up with high-energy, high-fat food and to keep water dishes filled. Similarly, the Hedgehog Preservation Society recommends leaving plentiful water supplies and also food, either meaty cat or dog meals or specialist hedgehog food.
For more information on Britain’s endangered species, go to:
hedgehogstreet.org
rspb.org.uk
butterfly-conservation.org
britishhedgehogs.org.uk
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British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012′s wet summer
Butterfly on flower (Photo credit: @Doug88888)
Scientists say it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans.
Fewer butterflies flew in British skies in the miserable summer of 2012 than for thousands of years, leaving several species in danger of extinction from parts of the country.
The country’s most endangered butterfly, the high brown fritillary, saw its small population slump by 46%, while another rare species, the black hairstreak, fell by 98%, as 300,000 fewer butterflies were recorded on the wing compared with 2011.
The wettest ever year recorded in England was equally damaging for once common species: of 56 native species monitored, 52 saw their numbers decline from the previous year, with big losses for once-ubiquitous small tortoiseshell, common blue and large and small whites.
The Marsh Fritillary population, seen here, dropped by 71%. Photograph: Tim Melling/Butterfly Conservation
Thirteen species experienced their worst year since the scientific monitoring of butterflies began in 1976 with thousands of volunteers counting a record-low abundance of butterflies. With centuries of more anecdotal records showing there were far greater numbers of butterflies in the decades before the 1970s, scientists believe it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans.
“The bad weather is definitely the biggest factor but it’s not as if everything will be rosy if we get a nice summer,” said Dr Tom Brereton, head of monitoring at Butterfly Conservation, which runs the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme with the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
According to Brereton, long-term declines driven by habit loss and agricultural intensification mean that many species live in isolated colonies in small nature reserves, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction after adverse weather. Unless more landscape-scaleconservation management is undertaken, helping butterflies traverse the countryside, species will not be able to recolonise former strongholds.
The high brown fritillary now flies at less than 50 sites in the country after recently becoming extinct in mid-Wales and the West Midlands. There are fears the summer of 2012 could precipitate its disappearance from south Wales, Dartmoor and Exmoor, leaving it clinging on only in the Morecambe Bay area.
The orange-tip population dropped by 34%. Photograph: Butterfly Conservation
Intensive efforts to conserve our rarest species mean that no butterfly has become extinct in Britain since 1979 but conservationists – as well as butterflies – are now struggling to adapt to climate change.
“Some of the rare species aren’t as easy to manage for as they used to be,” said Brereton. “Things that worked 30 years ago aren’t necessarily as successful today because vegetation is changing and the climate is changing.”
For instance, coppicing woodland to help promote the violets on which the high brown and pearl-bordered fritillary caterpillars feed is less successful now because other fast-growing vegetation quickly swamps the flowers. Less snow in the winter means that bracken grows more virulently in the spring and also smothers the violets.
There are two signs of hope, however. Some believe a cold winter benefits some species. And the butterfly that has had more money and scientific effort devoted to its rehabilitation than any other, the large blue, defied the bad weather in 2012 to experience its third best year since it was reintroduced into Britain in the early 1980s.
“It shows that if you put the resources in, and get the conservation management right, some of this can even overcome a bad season,” said Brereton. “That’s the good thing about butterflies – if you get the management right, and the weather comes good, they can respond spectacularly.”
Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, said it would be an anxious wait to see whether some butterfly species had clung on to emerge for another summer.
“This coming year we’ll be holding our breath to see whether species like the high brown fritillary have survived in areas where we’ve been working hard to recover habitats,” he said. “We know that butterflies are at the low-point in historical terms.”
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David Attenborough and butterflies
He is the world’s most famous defender of the natural world – but for years, Sir David Attenborough harboured a secret guilt about it.
On his early expeditions from the 1950s onwards as a travelling naturalist for London Zoo and the BBC, he had amassed a stunning collection of spectacular tropical butterflies, which he retained into the years when butterfly-collecting became socially unacceptable.
David Attenborough’s Life Stories (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
They included exotic swallowtails, fabulous blue morphos from South America and even more impressive, several New Guinea birdwings, which are the biggest butterflies in the word – including a specimen of the famous Rajah Brooke’s birdwing, whose wings are black with electric-green triangles and measure seven inches across.
When Sir David began, in the 1950s, many people in Britain collected butterflies and mounted them in cases in a tradition dating back 200 years, but as time went on views changed and collecting became taboo. So Sir David banished his collection to the loft, but remained anguished about what to do with it.
“I had collected a great number,” he said, “and when it became apparent that this was a terrible thing to have done, I put them in the loft. And I thought, what do I do with these ..they were marvellous things! I had ornithopterans [birdwings].” He said: “This was a great guilt in my life.”
Twenty years ago, however, his guilt was eased. Sir David said: “I happened to meet an entomologist from Cambridge University, and looking deep into the glass of wine, I said I’ve got this problem…
“And he said, I will solve your problem. I will save them for science and they will be used for science. And I gave him the whole lot, and with his students from the entomological department, they mounted them properly, and he put them to good use. I don’t necessarily know that they went into any important collection, but they went into academia. They went into scholarship.”
Sir David, president of the charity Butterfly Conservation, spoke to The Independent about his collecting earlier this week after launching The Big Butterfly Count, the annual survey of the insects, whose British populations are likely to have been very hard hit this year by the excessively rainy weather.
“In my early expeditions I was collecting animals for London Zoo, so it was part and parcel of the same thing,” he said. “I got armadillos, and snakes and boa constrictors, and butterflies.” He said his collection amounted to “maybe a hundred”.
He said he loved butterflies so much because “they are something that is a spark of wonder of the natural world which can fly into anybody’s life.”
He went on: “You don’t have to be wealthy. They come into everybody’s lives once a year, and a buddleia bush covered in butterflies, which I remember as a kid, was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things anybody could see.
“A whole host of people across the entire social spectrum used to collect butterflies. They can’t any more, quite right, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t as enchanted by them as they ever were.”
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Attenborough: Butterflies face worst year ever
David Attenborough and the ARKive (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Big Butterfly Count, taking place in the worst year on record for the insects, will alert conservationists to species most at risk. The Guardian reports
If this summer’s 50 shades of grey are getting you down, imagine how miserable it is to be a winged insect. In what is shaping up to be the worst year on record for butterflies, Sir David Attenborough on Wednesday urged people to find a window of sunshine and join the biggest butterfly count in the world.
The wettest April for a century and the dampest June on record has left lepidopterists despairing about the fate of Britain’s59 species, almost three quarters of which are in decline and one third are in danger of extinction.
English: Photograph of a Monarch Butterfly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Launching the third year of Butterfly Conservation‘s Big Butterfly Count, the biggest citizen science project of its kind in the world, Attenborough said it was more important than ever to discover if butterflies are dodging the downpour. The count, in which people are asked to record online all the common species they spot in a 15-minute window in their garden or local park, will alert conservationists to the species most in danger so efforts can be better targeted to prevent their extinction.
“The fact that every single person can produce a statistic that is of real value is a great spur,” said Attenborough. “But let’s not underestimate the spin-offs. Many people will for the first time start taking a careful and critical view of their surroundings. The butterfly count helps butterflies but it also helps natural history and eco-sensitivity in this country.”
Conservationists fear that this summer’s extreme weather will trigger local extinctions of rare species such as the heath fritillary, which only flies at 40 sites in Britain, and the high brown fritillary, found in 50 locations. But there are also concerns over common species and Butterfly Conservation hopes the count, which is supported by Marks & Spencer, will reveal how the small tortoiseshell is faring after counts revealed a dramatic population slump for this once-common garden butterfly.
The summer of 2012 may become the worst year for butterflies since records began in 1976. If butterfly sightings are lower than the sodden summer of 2007 it would suggest there are fewer butterflies than ever in the British Isles, as numbers have been in steady decline since the 1970s.
“The enthusiasts and scientists on the ground are very concerned and they are rightly concerned,” said Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation. “There’s a realistic fear of it being an extremely bad year. Sun-loving butterflies are having to cope with some of the wettest, coldest and dullest spring and summer weather on record.”
Prolonged wet weather prevents caterpillars from thriving and stops adults finding mates and laying eggs for next year’s generation. Most butterflies need warm temperatures and sunshine to acquire enough energy to fly.
Butterflies are experiencing a struggle between the warming effects of climate change, which should benefit sun-loving species, and extreme weather events, which insects struggle to cope with. It is not all doom and gloom, however: climate change is helping 10 species, including the peacock and the Essex skipper, expand northwards through Britain.
A few damp-loving butterflies have also thrived in recent wet summers, most notably the ringlet and the speckled wood. Britain’s butterflies have adapted to survive miserable summers, and insect numbers can quickly recover after dire years. The problem for the rarest species is that they are confined to small pockets of nature reserves – unable to escape local conditions in good or bad years – making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Poor weather can cause already rare species to enter a death spiral – becoming so small in number that they never fully recover.
As well as count butterflies, Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, said people could plant wild flowers and grasses in their gardens and called on every park to replace a portion of its mown grass with wild flower meadows to boost butterfly numbers.
“I look on mown lawns with horror,” said Warren. “Some people may think wild flower meadows look scruffy but I would defy anyone to walk through a wild flower meadow full of butterflies and not find that a wonderful experience.”
Links : Henricus Peters, co-chair of NAEEUK
English: Chalk Hill Blue, Sheffield Park. An unexpected find in the woods east of the National Trust gardens. This area is not normally open to the public but access was granted for the Sheffield Park Gardens Butterfly Day organised by the British Butterfly Conservation Society http://www.butterfly-conservation.org (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/12/david-attenborough-butterfly-count
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Spring weather baffles butterflies
Chalk Hill Blue, Sheffield Park. An unexpected find in the woods east of the National Trust gardens. This area is not normally open to the public but access was granted for the Sheffield Park Gardens Butterfly Day organised by the British Butterfly Conservation Society http://www.butterfly-conservation.org (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The spring weather has baffled Britain’s butterflies, with some emerging unusually early due to the warm March while others were hit by the April deluge, The Guardian reports.
Some spring species emerged several weeks early in March, but the wettest April on record and the continuing rain this month has delayed the appearance of many butterflies.
And wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation is warning that if the wet conditions continue it could affect the breeding success of some species later in the year.
Cold, wet weather makes butterflies less active, reducing feeding and mating.
Among those to put in an early appearance were the small blue butterfly, which was seen on 30 March on the Isle of Wight, one of the earliest dates recorded for the species and several weeks ahead of its usual emergence between mid-April and early May.
The wood white, which usually emerges in late April or May, was seen on 10 April in Surrey, while the threatened pearl-bordered fritillary was also recorded earlier than usual, Butterfly Conservation said.
But as the wet weather took hold, butterflies started to be spotted later than normal, with the common blue and brown argus appearing in early May, rather than being seen in mid-April which they would be in warm years.
Marsh fritillaries and adonis blues both emerged in the final week of April in 2011 but were not seen until the second week of May this year.
Richard Fox, Butterfly Conservation surveys manager, said: “Overall, butterflies have experienced an unusual spring so far – the mild winter and very warm March led to some extremely early emergences, but the cold, wet April delayed the emergence of other species.
“The worry about this April is that the butterflies that did emerge will have poor breeding success due to the bad weather.
“Unless conditions improve in the next few weeks their opportunities to breed will be very limited and, therefore, we may see population crashes later in the year or next spring.”
He added: “Last year we had a hot spring and a poor summer. This year we’re having a poor spring, so let’s hope the summer is better.”
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/18/spring-butterflies
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