Thanks to the generosity of the organisers of the annual Rempstone Steam Rally and Country Show, the fortunes of a tiny butterfly currently in severe decline in the UK may be boosted – by a habitat improvement project that seeks to take away vegetation and add gravel!
Such measures would not seem the obvious ones to improve butterfly health, but the Grizzled Skipper – a small black and white ‘chequerboard’ butterfly barely an inch across – needs specific plants for its caterpillars which only grow in relatively poor quality soil that is otherwise unattractive to most plants.
A donation of £500 was made to the East Midlands branch of UK charity Butterfly Conservation (EMBC) by the Rempstone Steam Rally and Country Show.
This charity event, the oldest steam rally in the country, has for over half a century sought to celebrate the countryside of yesteryear. This year’s event is being staged at Turnpost Farm, near Wymeswold on July 14-15.
Colin Green is the organiser of the show’s countryside section. He said: “We like to share the funds we make each year principally among smaller, local charities for whom sums in the order of £500 can make a significant difference.
“The East Midlands Branch of Butterfly Conservation has been attending the show for a decade or more now, so I was delighted to be told this donation would be used to help secure the future of a rare butterfly.”
EMBC quickly identified the Grizzled Skipper, which has been under threat through habitat loss for a quarter of a century, as a suitable benefactor for the donation. Each year charitable funds are made available to the long-established Grizzled Skipper Project run through the Nottinghamshire Biodiversity Action Group.
The project began in 2011 following funding from the SITA Trust, with direct support from Nottinghamshire County Council and EMBC together with further funding from Rushcliffe Borough Council and support from Sustrans. Dedicated volunteer groups have since worked on more than a dozen sites, chiefly old railway lines and disused quarries, to help improve or create habitats for the Grizzled Skipper.
Each year, since the project’s initial funded stage was completed in 2014, EMBC has continued to provide funding that allows the work parties to maintain sites that promote the skippers’ favourite food plants, low-growing members of the rose family such as Creeping Cinquefoil and Wild Strawberry.
EMBC’s Grizzled Skipper Project Officer, Bill Bacon, said: “This funding is vital in allowing us to buy materials such as gravel, which helps form an ideal foundation for the Grizzled Skipper territories and allows our volunteers to continue their valuable work to help secure a future for this butterfly in the East Midlands.”
With the ongoing co-operation of the Great Central Railway, the donation will be used on a section of the restored GCR steam line in Nottinghamshire – adjacent to the Rempstone Road tunnel – to maintain the open habitat that is vital for the Grizzled Skipper, capitalising on work done at this site over the last few years.
This attractive species has declined in abundance by more than 50 per cent during the past quarter of a century and is one of the priority butterfly species in the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP). It has a quite limited range and is not found above a line running from the Wash to the Wirral, with its few strongholds in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire sited at the northern limit of its range.
They are not easy to spot. In the East Midlands, lucky sharp-eyed observers may occasionally catch a glimpse as they fly fast and low between food plants in the sheltered and sparsely-vegetated locations they favour, such as woodland edges, clearings and rides, rough grassland and, of course, old railway lines.
The Grizzled Skipper is not alone as a species in decline; in fact, most butterfly species found in Britain have been on a downward track in recent years, chiefly due to Britain’s changing landscape and disappearing habitats. A huge effort is being exerted by Butterfly Conservation, with its nationwide membership of 30,000 and active volunteer force numbering 15,000, to reverse this trend.
Volunteers generate hundreds of thousands of hours monitoring species, as part of work parties or on broader administrative tasks that contribute to a wide range of both general and local initiatives such as the one at Rempstone Road Tunnel.