Extinct Butterfly Returns to England After 50 Years

The Chequered Skipper butterfly is fluttering through English woods for the first time in half a century, and the team that made it happen just secured funding to bring back even more.

Butterfly Conservation received £150,000 from Natural England to expand its groundbreaking work reintroducing the extinct species to Rockingham Forest near Corby. The charity heard the good news while collecting butterflies in Belgium's Wallonia region, then successfully released 46 butterflies into the woodland days later.

Dr Jamie Wildman, who leads the project, couldn't contain his excitement. "We were in Belgium when we heard the news and it gave the trip a fantastic impetus," he said. "It just felt like the stars had aligned."

The Chequered Skipper once filled East Midlands woodlands in such numbers that some naturalists described seeing clouds of them. But when landowners switched from traditional woodland management to planting conifer trees in the 1950s, the butterflies lost the sunny, sheltered spots they needed to survive. By 1976, they had completely disappeared from England.

The return required patience and partnership. Butterfly Conservation spent eight years planning before their first collection trip in 2018. Local landowners including Forestry England worked with the charity to restore traditional woodland management practices starting in 2015, creating the right habitat before any butterflies returned.

The team has now completed five trips to Belgium, releasing 208 butterflies total into Rockingham Forest. Every single butterfly from the latest trip took flight within seconds of release and disappeared into the foliage. Even better, the butterflies are successfully reproducing, creating the first English Chequered Skipper caterpillars in decades.

The new funding will support another collection trip next year, expand suitable habitat, and plant more bugle flowers for the butterflies to feed on. A Cambridge University student will also study how the butterflies adapt to different conditions at the reintroduction sites.

The Ripple Effect

This success proves that habitat loss can be reversed when experts and landowners work together for the long haul. More than half of Britain's native butterfly species are declining, but most face the same fixable problem the Chequered Skipper did: disappearing habitat that can be restored with proper management.

Karl Ivens from Forestry England called it "a fantastic conservation success story" that shows what happens when partners and volunteers commit to long term habitat restoration.

Clouds of Chequered Skippers may fill English woodlands again.