Butterfly decline is no surprise to bee-liners

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/12/butterfly-decline-is-no-surprise-to-bee-liners

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I read about the butterfly decline noticed by people all around the country, described by Patrick Barkham (Record low UK butterfly count is ‘a shock and mystery’, 10 October). I don’t find it so much of a mystery, having spent the summer planning for and walking from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh on what we called a Bee Line.

This initiative was triggered by a visit in September 2014 to our former farm on the edge of Salisbury Plain. When we moved there in the late 1940s, there were permanent pastures, hedges and ancient drove roads lined with wayfarers’ trees and carpeted with wildflowers – orchids, harebells, trefoils – and abuzz with bees, butterflies, dragonflies and pollinators of all kinds. Now, 60 years on, it is a silent landscape; no cows, chickens, sheep, or even farm workers, just contractors, and of course no birds, butterflies, bees or flying insects. Between 30 August and 6 September we followed our Bee Line, walking some 80km from Edinburgh to our home along small roads, footpaths, cycle tracks, disused railway lines, through open moorland. We saw few butterflies, moths or bees and even noted a lack of midges.

The decline could be caused by a number of factors, such as weather conditions earlier in the year, but is exacerbated by the same things that are also damaging the bee populations.

Agribusiness and its associated practices: monoculture, weedkillers, neonicotinoids, fungicides, molluscicides, and farming practices including pre-spraying of grain crops before harvesting and removal of hedges. Local authority and homeowners’ obsession with frequent flat strimming and clearing edges of roadways, motorways, roundabouts. Loss of brownfield sites to development and the associated loss of a rich mix of plants and invertebrates. Treatment of garden bedding plants and seeds, currently being researched by Friends of the Earth.

On our Bee Line walk and while doing planning walks, the only place that was buzzing with both bees and butterflies was the disused railway line pathway between Broughton and Biggar, which is edged with bee and butterfly friendly plants. Even golf courses, which are extensive green spaces, can be managed intensively with little room to share with wildlife. On the moorland, which is managed for sheep and grouse, we saw just a few bees and moths enjoying heather, thyme yarrow and harebells. Meg BeresfordWiston, South Lanarkshire

• The decline in butterfly numbers comes as no surprise to me at all. The one place in my parish where the range and number of butterfly species was high (or at least what might be considered normal) was a stretch of roadside verge specially seeded by the local authority with wildflower mixture. This attracted large numbers of gatekeepers, coppers and blues in particular this summer. The decline in not only butterflies and other insects but birds and wildflowers too is no doubt due to the fashion for “gardening” the countryside. That is, unnecessary and untimely mowing in particular and the planting out of what were wild spaces so that they essentially become extensions of urban parks and gardens.

These areas may look neat and tidy, but it’s playing havoc with biodiversity. Wildlife desperately needs what some perceive as untidy spaces or scrub. Habitat destruction by removing cover for protection, feeding, finding mates and breeding, not to mention overwintering, is more than decimating our wildlife. Graham StocksQuorn, Leicestershire

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