Major Successes In Battle To Save The Duke Of Burgundy
Last week I joined a volunteer and staff from the BC Fundraising Team (Helen Corrigan, Poppy Mackie, Catherine Napper and David Bridges, the Head of this enthusiastic group) on our biggest Duke colony in Sussex ('Site A' in our Annual Report). The idea was to show the butterfly to those in the team that had yet to see it 'in the flesh', and to demonstrate how focused conservation measures are meeting with a high level of success, at least locally. Despite 100% cloud cover we flushed a huge number of Dukes from the grass. While we enjoyed a picnic on an orchid-rich bank, I wandered a short distance and saw 5 male Dukes sitting close together on a single, stunted, knee-high beech. I had a strong feeling that a survey under more suitable conditions would produce the sort of count that I had first dreamed of five years back, when work here began in earnest. On returning I soon realised that my optimism was not misplaced, counting
128 Dukes! A major milestone in the Sussex Branch conservation campaign had been reached. This great success is shared with our partners, the South Downs Joint Committee, without whose help (both financially and in terms of labour and wider support) these results could never have been achieved. Elsewhere in the county, their assistance looks set to bring future successes in years to come.
Perhaps even more remarkable are the successes being achieved at Heyshott Escarpment. Regular readers of the Sussex Branch 'Sightings' page will have been surprised by the numbers being reported by the dedicated 'Team Heyshott' surveyors Colin Knight, Roger Martin and Steve Morgan. I wanted 'a piece of the action' myself, so returned on Friday 21st May for the first time since leading a BC walk here earlier in the month. I could scarcely believe my eyes! I teamed up with Bart Reason to go over the site with a fine toothcomb. We got stuck on a count of 47 for over an hour, wandering over the western flank which has remained Duke-less for decades, but where the others had seen a couple of butterflies on an earlier visit. After a while it suddenly dawned on me that these would have been wandering females, 'spreading their wings' and spreading the population, as the direct result of this meteoric population increase. We had only one chance left to meet our newly assigned target. We returned to the lowermost pit where we had seen nothing, several hours earlier under unsuitable conditions (the males are highly territorial and don't move around much). We immediately found 4 males, bringing the grand total to
51 Dukes. For many, many years this colony has survived on maximum daily counts of 'twos and threes'. The abundance sequence now reads 2 (2007), 7 (2008), 8 (2009) and 51 (2010). It is seldom that the term 'population explosion' can be applied to the Duke of Burgundy these days!
Although the Sussex Branch has acted in an advisory role here, the lion's share of the credit must lie with the Murray Downland Trust
http://www.murraydownlandtrust.org.uk who do a marvellous job in managing this and their other reserves, spread between East Hampshire and West Sussex. They are worthy of anyone's support and their winter work parties (contact them A/A) will be swelled by those eager to help continue this very happy story.