In a nutshell...
Funding: £150,000 (£30,000pa for 5 years)*
Length: 5 years
Location: Isle of Wight National Landscape
Aim: To restore globally-significant chalk habitat that bolsters key butterfly species and protects their wider ecosystem services.
Opportunities: Corporate visit days
*subject to additional management fees.
The opportunity
Far from just a pretty face, the butterfly is critical to human health and resilience.
A pollinator every bit as important as the bee, the butterfly helps to sustain our food systems and indicates to us differences in weather patterns and climate. This service allows us to plan for change and protect ourselves for the future.
Plus they’ve been around for at least 50 million years. Not bad for something so small and flighty.
But like much of our native wildlife, the butterfly is under threat.
Sweeping habitat destruction, pesticide use, various anthropogenic disturbances and changes in climate are pushing this sensitive species to the brink of extinction. But the Isle of Wight National Landscape team is having none of it.
The project
Home to globally-significant chalk grassland habitat and part of the ambitious, landscape-scale Big Chalk partnership, the Isle of Wight National Landscape team is on a mission.
This unique habitat supports a vast array of species including the following key butterflies:
Adonis blue: the rarest of the UK’s blue butterflies found in small colonies that don’t travel far, making them vulnerable to threats.
Common blue: the most widespread of the blue butterflies, it’s found in a range of habitats across the country
Brown argus: found throughout the UK, this butterfly is a real home-bird, not usually moving more than around 200m from where it emerged.
Small blue: the smallest of the UK’s butterfly species, found almost exclusively in southern English chalkland.
© Andrew Cooper, Butterfly Conservation.
Chalk hill blue: one of the largest blue butterflies. Ants are often found around their caterpillars, protecting them and feeding off a sugary substance they produce.
© Iain Leach, Butterfly Conservation.
Saving the Blues aims to improve the habitat of these butterflies which in turn provides knock-on benefits to the food chain and wider chalk ecosystem.
The project has been underway since April 2024 with 3 aims:
- To raise awareness among the general public on the value of this habitat.
- To use the five ‘blue’ butterflies found on the grasslands as flagship species for the habitat as a whole
- To provide funding for three partners to enhance a combined 113ha of chalk grassland (18% of that found within the National Landscape).
The results so far...
The project has so far achieved:
- Thousands of social media engagements across various channels from partners and stakeholders.
- 113ha of fenced habitat as planned.
- Scrub clearance and cattle handling facilities installed to protect the environment.
- Ongoing monitoring to measure the impact of the activities on the butterfly species.
Where you come in
If restoration works cannot continue, the positive environmental and social impacts of these butterflies is in jeopardy.
By supporting this critical project, you are not only strengthening the restoration works of globally-significant chalk habitats in the UK, but joining one of the most ambitious partnerships of its kind.
Read more about Saving the Blues.
Interested in supporting this vital conservation work?
Get in touch with the team today.