Butterfly Preservation Action - Leigh-on-Sea

Share this story!

Leigh On Sea News: Butterfly Preservation Team – A TEAM of volunteers from Butterfly Conservation joined forces with Essex Wildlife Trust in Hadleigh Great Wood to preserve the home of a rare UK butterfly.

Butterfly Preservation Team - A TEAM of volunteers from Butterfly Conservation joined forces with Essex Wildlife Trust in Hadleigh Great Wood to preserve the home of a rare UK butterfly.

A TEAM of volunteers from Butterfly Conservation joined forces with Essex Wildlife Trust in Hadleigh Great Wood to preserve the home of a rare UK butterfly.

Essex Wildlife Trust (EWT) manage the woodland habitat around Daws Heath to improve numbers of the Heath Fritillary butterfly.

Nine volunteers and the Essex Wildlife Trust Ranger coppiced two ride side areas on a North and South route to create invitingly broad but sheltered corridors linking areas where good numbers of the butterfly have been seen historically and where the larval food plant – Common Cow Wheat – grows.

A large scallop where Cow Wheat grows, but where bracken dominates, was brush cut and raked to give wildflowers a chance to thrive.

A spokesperson said: “The Daws Heath Living Landscape is a stronghold for a beautiful, but UK rare, butterfly.

“Both Pound and Hockley Woods reported extremely good numbers in the 2024 season proving that the hard work put in to maintain ideal Heath Fritillary habitats paid dividends.

“Thank you to the Butterfly Conservation volunteers for giving up their Sunday to work in Hadleigh Great Wood and special thanks to Rob Smith (County Butterfly Recorder for Essex) for all his time spent in surveying and planning and for leading the work party.”

Picture: at conservation. Pic EWT

about author

Editor