www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I would hope that most people here have studied Latin so I don't consider myself
superior. Please Mark, don't jump to conclusions. I explained that "data" is a plural
because in the past I have been accused of bad grammar.

It is logically fallacious to dismiss a study because it is slightly old.
The evidence suggests that the failures continue. The last time I spoke to
Martin Warren about the Marsh Fritillary numbers less than a decade ago.
The number of failures had gone up to over 80!

I think you want this to be untrue so you are looking for excuses to rubbish the data. I'd suggest studying the books I mentioned. We know now even more about why introducing isolated colonies of butterflies does not work than we did 20 years ago.

I would like it to be true that it was easy to move butterflies around but being a
rational person I cannot accept that because the EVIDENCE says otherwise.

Neil Jones wrote:Let me make a couple of points.
On my point about Large Coppers. They are pretty much unique in having been in captivity for decades. Therefore as I said they will be likely to have evolved some degree of domestication. It may not be obvious but it will have occurred.

The other point about introductions is this. You are all not looking at the science properly. It has been studied . There is a study published.

INTRODUCTIONS ONLY RARELY WORK.

That is why they need to be done properly not just anyone releasing anything anywhere. This creates problems with temporary colonies of rare species. Diverted conservation help and a false picture of the species status.

Just to reiterate in case my posting yesterday was overlooked........We still have the Heath Fritillary in Cornwall largely thanks to 2 fellow lepidopterists I know who used their breeding skills to breed 10 female Heath Frits from Devon (which prior to 1993 originated from Cornwall) into over 1600 adult Heath Fritillary butterflies within 12 months!! This was all done under EN Licence (so that will please those who may think this is illegal) and a thriving colony exists again on Duchy of Cornwall land where it became extinct in 2003. The reintroduction occurred in 2006 & a 10 year management plan has recently been agreed & the future looks good for what is our (Cornwall's) only Heath Fritillary colony!!!! Well done to those two elderly Gents who brilliantly used their skills to multiply the original H.F. adults 16,000% (I think) within a year. The Devon colony is doing very well too! If we weren't to touch, rear, breed etc, etc then both Devon & Cornwall would have lost & not regained the Heath Fritillary!!

Properly done by 2 unpaid enthusiasts (both known to myself & many other butterfly enthusiasts in Cornwall & Devon) who have learnt to rear butterflies in captivity & who did it for the love of the butterfly & 10 female Heath Fritillaries taken from Devon's only colony under EN Licence to rear up the 1600+ Heath Fritillaries within 12 months to then be released back to Luckett in East Cornwall which had been made suitable again for this rare & protected butterfly & this should be a lesson to what can be achieved without hurting the original donor colony! Then again we could have waited 10000+ years for the next Ice Age to come & go & see the butterfly repopulate again from France because there would be absolutely no chance whatsoever that it would fly 280+ miles from Blean in Kent or from any of the Essex colonies!
Lesson learnt that these things CAN be achieved if people are determined enough? I hope so!
Lets stop the habitats being destroyed and neglected!!!
Excellent idea by Mr Senior in suggesting a national re-introduction programme of getting 100 or so former Duke of Burgundy habitats in Britain suitable for the breeding of the butterfly & then organise a captive rearing of selected & carefully collected wild Dukes from a range of colonies that are not too small to build up 10,000+ adults over a couple of years to then be released into these former restored colonies. I wonder what the Butterfly Conservation Action Plan for this species that was compiled by them in the late 1990's says their aims are regarding restoration of the Duke's habitats?
These action plans were for a reason & I, as well as I'm sure many people wonder what skills & power Butterfly Conservation have to maybe try this plan to possibly save this species from seemingly a doomed future or even the dreaded extinction!!!!!
Does anyone on here have direct access to BC & maybe could ask the right people about this?
Lee (Cornwall).

Neil , Ok I concede that data 10 or so years old indicates that the reintroduction of the Marsh Fritillary is unlikely to succeed . Have you any data you can point us towards that refers to other species .
Lee - excellent points . I may not have the skills necessary to take part in such an action plan , but I would have no hesitation in making a funding donation .

lee3764 wrote:

Neil Jones wrote:Let me make a couple of points.
On my point about Large Coppers. They are pretty much unique in having been in captivity for decades. Therefore as I said they will be likely to have evolved some degree of domestication. It may not be obvious but it will have occurred.

The other point about introductions is this. You are all not looking at the science properly. It has been studied . There is a study published.

INTRODUCTIONS ONLY RARELY WORK.

That is why they need to be done properly not just anyone releasing anything anywhere. This creates problems with temporary colonies of rare species. Diverted conservation help and a false picture of the species status.

Just to reiterate in case my posting yesterday was overlooked........We still have the Heath Fritillary in Cornwall largely thanks to 2 fellow lepidopterists I know who used their breeding skills to breed 10 female Heath Frits from Devon (which prior to 1993 originated from Cornwall) into over 1600 adult Heath Fritillary butterflies within 12 months!! This was all done under EN Licence (so that will please those who may think this is illegal) and a thriving colony exists again on Duchy of Cornwall land where it became extinct in 2003. The reintroduction occurred in 2006 & a 10 year management plan has recently been agreed & the future looks good for what is our (Cornwall's) only Heath Fritillary colony!!!! Well done to those two elderly Gents who brilliantly used their skills to multiply the original H.F. adults 16,000% (I think) within a year. The Devon colony is doing very well too! If we weren't to touch, rear, breed etc, etc then both Devon & Cornwall would have lost & not regained the Heath Fritillary!!

This isn't that difficult to do you know. You put the females in tubs of foodplant
covered in netting. If the anatomy of the females is the same as related species
then the theoretical maximum size of an egg batch is 288 eggs. So 1600 adults from ten females in a year isn't that difficult.

Provided there is enough food in each tub and they can hibernate OK all you have to do is keep an eye on them.

It is just a matter of keeping the predators off.

Incidentally releasing massive numbers may not be the ideal either because they could reduce the foodplant too much.

Not to diminish your efforts but isolated single colonies are not the way to do it.
you need to establish them on a landscape scale for long term success.

I guess that everyone is right. Those two butterfly-lovers who bred and released those HF and those who say, perhaps controversially, that we don't want to have a countryside full of butterfly "zoos".....
I do have sympathy with both views - on the micro-level, it is only throgh the activites of some butterly-lovers that we have managed to hang-on to some of our most threatened species; on the macro level, the fact that we have "saved" a species in such a way ("The butterflies are OK now!") does deflect from the wider issue of making all the countryside suitable for butterflies. It is a difficult one - and to be frank, we do need both.
Ultimately, though, unless the second option becomes more of a reality, we will increasingly have isolated populations that are vulnerable to extinction, and all those who re-introduce will be doing is patching-up the holes...
N

Mark Senior wrote:Neil , Ok I concede that data 10 or so years old indicates that the reintroduction of the Marsh Fritillary is unlikely to succeed . Have you any data you can point us towards that refers to other species .
Lee - excellent points . I may not have the skills necessary to take part in such an action plan , but I would have no hesitation in making a funding donation .

I don't have access to the precise references at present. But I wrote this in another forum some years ago when I did have access to the data

Martin Warren's paper in the Ecology of Butterflies in Britain
edited by Roger L.H. Dennis. published in 1992 by Oxford University Press
This presents the main data. If you look at the results. Out of 323
releases there were only 12 introductions which had lasted 10 years or
over. 9 of these were for just three species and I know from the
author that the 3 of these have all subsequently died out (All the same
species and all the over ten year survivals for that species.)"

So the success rate is about three or four percent.

Neil Jones wrote:

Mark Senior wrote:Neil , Ok I concede that data 10 or so years old indicates that the reintroduction of the Marsh Fritillary is unlikely to succeed . Have you any data you can point us towards that refers to other species .
Lee - excellent points . I may not have the skills necessary to take part in such an action plan , but I would have no hesitation in making a funding donation .

I don't have access to the precise references at present. But I wrote this in another forum some years ago when I did have access to the data

Martin Warren's paper in the Ecology of Butterflies in Britain
edited by Roger L.H. Dennis. published in 1992 by Oxford University Press
This presents the main data. If you look at the results. Out of 323
releases there were only 12 introductions which had lasted 10 years or
over. 9 of these were for just three species and I know from the
author that the 3 of these have all subsequently died out (All the same
species and all the over ten year survivals for that species.)"

So the success rate is about three or four percent.

More 20 year old data , Neil .
I would think the science of lepidoptery has learnt something from both the successes and the failures . Your success rate of 3-4% is low nut INHO not negligible and can and should be increased to the 10-15% rate fairly easily .
One of the reasons for the extinction of colonies of both existing and reintroduced colonies is the small gene pools in those colonoes by the necessary re-interbreeding . One of my main points is that to strengthen the gene pools we should be not only introducing new colonies but also introducing new genes into existing colonies through exchanging specimens .

Mark Senior wrote: One of the reasons for the extinction of colonies of both existing and reintroduced colonies is the small gene pools in those colonoes by the necessary re-interbreeding .

Do you have any references for this please Mark?

Bill

Ahem..As the person who started the thread.... Just to say I got my answer by page 2 of this thread. i.e. yes it is legal. It was a question as I was genuinely puzzled as to how selling stock saying it was from wood walton fen was legal... I got an answer - thanks

Rest assured I don't normally google the words "Butterfly collector" but seeing the other listings for sale I did, and came up with a page that mentioned a Salisbury collector and as the listings were based in Salisbury I asked about that too, and this too got cleared up and answered that there was no connection.

I just want to make it clear I am NOT and never have been against people who captive breed any animal. I have actively supported with money some captive breeding programs for rare birds. So to those who seem to think I was slagging off breeders of butterflies, please think again.

My only further contribution to this thread is regarding inbreeding.

I have been breeding rare varieties of poultry for over 30 years so do know a fair bit about selective breeding of livestock, I feel it might relate to captive bred and isolated colonies of butterflies as well.

Line-breeding e.g fatherxdaughter and motherxson and so on down the generations is a safe way of breeding closely related animals with few problems arising, and can be continued if done judiciously for a long while.

But with their short lifespan this does not take place with butterflies as the parents shuffled off the mortal coil the previous year.

In livestock breeding mating brother to sister is asking for trouble if done for more than two generations. Now in the wild state, butterflies in small isolated colonies will be pairing brother to sister almost certainly.

Carefully paired and monitored in captive breeding situations with butterflies sourced from other sites means this form of inbreeding could be avoided.

New genes introduce a "hybrid vigour" ( Heterosis) a term well know and used by livestock breeders. Although with pedigree animals this out-cross may introduce some genes you then have to line-breed to remove ( usually undesirable colour traits or shape) I doubt this would affect butterflies as they have not been domestically bred for specific fancy traits and you are not cross-breeding species.

Therefore I have to say that to my mind it might be worth in some instances removing the a few wild caught specimens and pairing them in captivity to unrelated stock , and reintroducing the offspring to the colony under supervision, to bring fresh genes to these colonies.

An erudite response Eris.

Jack

Jack Harrison wrote:An erudite response Eris.

Jack

Totally agree , probably the best post on this thread .

Mark Senior wrote:

Jack Harrison wrote:An erudite response Eris.

Jack

Totally agree , probably the best post on this thread .

Yay - common sense prevails! Couldn't agree more. I've actually enjoyed this thread because we need to get sensitive subjects out on the table and debated.

Thanks all - but I think this thread has now run its course (for me, anyway!).

Cheers,

- Pete

Eris wrote:
The add says they are captive bred from wood-walton fen stock. I thought this would be illegal but maybe I'm wrong.

Actually, and rather more accurately, the description should read:~

Wood Walton butterflies are from captive bred stock...

Wood Walton butterflies are from captive bred stock...

Hmmm! Is that legal?

Zonda wrote:

Wood Walton butterflies are from captive bred stock...

Hmmm! Is that legal?

I like the cut of your jib Zonda... a kindred spirit I suspect .... you rascal... and your four exhaust pipes ...

I followed this one locally a while back... he was actually holding me up in my old Rover... not for the first time a supercar has done that..



Yeah I know ... a tad off topic..
..

I did wonder what Zonda meant...

Vroom!! Vroom!! Vroom! Pull back or i'll fry ya.

Can anybody please sum up the findings of this discussion? ahem...can anybody be bothered? It would be helpful!
Cheers
Julian

That's very interesting, Julian, because I was talking to a few people offline about having a "position" on various (sensitive) topics, such as collecting, captive-rearing, use of nets etc.

But I'm intrigued by your request. In particular, I'd be interested in your thoughts on what a summary of this thread might look like (given that there are conflicting opinions expressed).

Cheers,

- Pete

Hi Pete

Well, I think you’ve summed up the emotive subject in a few succinct words. Very helpful. There are mixed/conflicting views - and we have to live with it. Thanks...

Hopefully we butterfly enthusiasts- who have these different points of view and preferences when it comes to butterfly species protection and wildlife in general- are all in the same boat in as much as we want to see things protected and rescued from the brink, and our living landscapes restored..... I guess the original post raised this question? Personally, I am moderately happy with the state of affairs which allows some to pin/collect, others to breed etc, and still others to introduce, even though I dislike pinning (today). If I am honest with myself, I see the real problem is not to do with that initial gut reaction against pinning....

Remember the Rio Earth Summit of 1992? Agenda 21? Sustainable Development? How about 10 years later 2002? What has been achieved ? Yes there have been notable successes but sadly also failures. Big failures.
To quote Birdlife International,

World leaders have failed to deliver commitments made in 2002 to reduce the global rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, and have instead overseen alarming biodiversity declines. These findings are the result of a new paper published in the leading journal Science and represent the first assessment of how the targets made through the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have not been met.
Compiling over 30 indicators – measures of different aspects of biodiversity, including changes in species’ populations and risk of extinction, habitat extent and community composition – the study found no evidence for a significant reduction in the rate of decline of biodiversity, and that the pressures facing biodiversity continue to increase. The synthesis provides overwhelming evidence that the 2010 target has not been achieved.

Personally I think there has to be a real paradigm shift or sea change in the way we view wildlife. I think the crux of the matter has to do with ambiguity regarding legal status and protection of wildlife species and their loss due to some higher need to ‘develop’ a site, i.e., to stick a supermarket, housing estate or road on top of it for the sake of our 'economy'. No wonder we are in such a mess. This not only confuses ( younger generations in particular ) but it also sends out a message of hypocrisy. Surely, the real higher need is to preserve and protect, and only then, to ‘develop’? This then would be a non- hypocritical and sincere message.

For me, unless I witness that sea -change in legislation (which I hope one day will come) then the ‘hands on’ approach of a net and a jam jar is the way to go since it can inspire so many into a lifetime’s fascination at the wonder of it all. I confess I've also used an old, pinned specimen borrowed from the local museum once, to help with getting a message across. I’ve helped run ‘bug’ events locally and where appropriate, which is most of the time, we’ve used nets, magnifying jars and moth traps to identify insects, and we’ve also presented living bred specimens ( some rare and unlikely to be otherwise seen ) to show the life cycle and beauty of such. In my opinion, all of this really does get youngsters, middlies, and oldies interested, if not fascinated. It’s not enough but it’s a start, as is the thrust towards 'Living Landscapes, and connected habitats, etc. This is another useful approach to saving our beleaguered wild species such as butterflies, but it's getting very late. I think until 'we' can put our biodiversity above profit, then we will always be fighting a losing battle.

I hope that this response has neither wandered too far from the thrust of the original post nor bored you all too much.

Cheers
Julian