Cash advice to help save butterfly

5 December 2001



Cash advice to help save butterfly

By FWi staff

FARMERS are being given advice on obtaining grants to help save a butterfly which has lost much of its habitat to intensive agriculture.

The marsh fritillary, which thrives of damp tussocky chalk grassland, has been hit by land drainage, the destruction of meadows and overgrazing.

Government wildlife advisor English Nature says that at present rates of destruction, the species could have all but vanished within 10 years.

It has joined up with Butterfly Conservation to work with farmers and landowners to halt the decline, reports the Daily Express.

They will be given details of grants for managing the land to protect the butterfly.

English Natures Species Recovery Programme, which was launched 10 years ago. Successes include the recovery of the red kite, bittern and dormouse.

Species in peril include the cornflower, skylark, red squirrel and water vole.

• Court grants review of rare bird SSSI, FWi, 23 November 2001
• Bringing back the butterflies, FWi, 17 April 1998
  
• Daily Express, 5 December 2001, page 27