Broadening Perspective

Abstract

The story of the Richmond birdwing conservation project so far contains some very pertinent messages for advancing butterfly conservation. It has been undertaken in a milieu that contrasts markedly with most butterfly species conservation campaigns in Europe or North America, in which a groundswell of interest, goodwill and involvement has been evident for decades, or longer. Under those circumstances public support can commonly be presumed, and garnered easily, in any such initiative, as an invaluable component of the conservation programme. In Britain, for example, concerns for butterfly wellbeing extend from the nineteenth century, with the continuing campaigns for the Large copper (Lycaena dispar (Haworth)) and more recently the Large blue (Maculinea arion (Linn.)) amongst the leading global efforts for individual taxa and supported by wide community interest and concern throughout their history, leading to effective international cooperations over the European ranges of these taxa. The ongoing efforts to re-introduce L. dispar (from European stock of closely related subspecies) to Woodwalton Fen and more recent consideration for extending this effort to the Norfolk Broads (Pullin et al. 1995), and the dramatic success of bringing M. arion back to southern England from a Swedish stock (Thomas et al. 2009) have both had wide benefits in advancing appreciation of the subtle biological idiosyncrasies of these taxa, and the care needed to provide for these in the receiving environments. These two projects have also demonstrated that such exercises are not to be regarded as a ‘quick fix’, but that enduring effort and commitment may be needed over several decades, or more. Those benefits have extended to important widening of awareness to a broad public constituency in which appreciation of natural history has strong traditional foundation, and amongst whom the detailed biological idiosyncrasies of individual ecologically specialised species can also be appreciated and catered.