ren
Aurelian
Natural History Fan
Posts: 100
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Post by ren on Mar 9, 2020 15:10:59 GMT
I found this very interesting journal article about rare butterflies thriving at the site of an artillery range... what we may think creatures need (no disturbance!) is sometimes quite wrong. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800533/ |
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Post by xavm (Xavier) on Mar 9, 2020 16:31:34 GMT
The most and better protected areas are the military ones in France where you can find the scarest butterflies e.g. Coenonympha tullia...
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Post by nomad on Mar 9, 2020 16:39:16 GMT
Some of the best butterfly sites in England are on the Military training areas and ranges of Salisbury Plain. No ploughing and spraying there.
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Post by mothylator on Mar 10, 2020 10:03:24 GMT
A very moving and fascinating article, thanks.
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Post by luehdorfia on Mar 15, 2020 12:06:34 GMT
What an amazing article! Every conservationist should read it! So many problems would be solved.
Natural disturbances vs. Agricultural and urbanisation disturbances this is the best and easiest summary to explain this problem to “tree huggers”.
I heard exactly a similar case study from a conservationist in Germany who observes Limenitis reducta on the Swabian Alp, it’s the most northern population of limenitis reducta, and it is declining very fast.
It relies on a little shrub as food plant that only thrives in forest clearings. But the German nature reserve office stopped all clear cutting in state owned forests since they say clear cutting harms the environment.
Guess what, the only places where the butterfly still exists are private forests where the owners couldn’t care less about nature and still proceed with the hundred year old tradition of clear cutting. The butterfly is extremely mobile, and they will search for new forest clearings with their food plant in a ten to fifteen miles radius, then a population will thrive there for five to ten years until the shrubs are again covered by succession.
Problem is 80% of forest is state owned and private owners that practice clear cutting get a lot of bad press.
My friend the conservationist tries to prove it with numbers, but saving nature by clear cutting you can imagine is not the easiest task....
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