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NEWSLETTER No. 44 -  Autumn 1999

WEST MIDLANDS BRANCH, BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION

 

Butterfly Conservation – 3rd International Symposium
Oxford Brookes University, 3-5 September 1999

Over 150 delegates from all over the world gathered on Friday 3rd. of September for the 3rd. International Symposium organised by Butterfly Conservation. This was composed of two and a half days of presentations, all devoted to the conservation of butterflies and moths. The weekend was divided into various sessions, each with a general theme.

After the opening speeches by our chairman Stephen Jeffcoate and the very able organiser Andrew Pullin, the first part of Friday morning concentrated on the use of Genetics in Species Conservation. During this session we learned about an African butterfly being used for genetic experiments in Holland; the population structure of the Clouded Apollo in Norway; how the Marsh Fritillary seems to have come into this country from one single post glacial colonisation; how inbreeding depression increases the risk of extinction of Glanville Fritillary colonies in Finland; and how some of the sub-species of Northern Brown Argus seem to be hybrids with the Brown Argus. The more we look at what a species is, the less we seem to be able to define the term.

The second session was devoted to the Conservation Management of Metapopulations. Here we found out about The Pearl-bordered Fritillary in Scotland; The Silver-studded Blue, Forester Moth and Horehound Plume Moth in North Wales; Prairie Butterflies in Wisconsin; how a German researcher is inducing dispersal of the Bog Fritillary by annoying them with a model of the Butterfly on a stick; and how good habitat for the Lulworth Skipper is no good for the Adonis Blue and vice versa, a habitat management problem on the Dorset Coast. Stephen Jeffcoate pleaded with the speakers in his opening speech not to use too many statistics in their presentations, this was not heeded by all speakers, but the science presented was proving ideas which many of us had suspected as being the truth all along. It was nice to see many PhD students presenting their work and being accepted into the family atmosphere of Butterfly Conservation, a friendly symposium carrying on from the first in Keele and the second at Warwick The last presentation was by Robert Pyle on the migration of Monarchs in North America, a fascinating talk on an amazing subject, by an extraordinary character. In the evening there was time for socialising, meeting up with old friends, making new contacts, and putting faces and personalities to the names we read about in the news.

Saturday was an annoying day for me as the day was a day of parallel sessions, meaning that I could only possibly attend half of the talks, so reluctantly I had to decide which ones to miss out. In the morning I went to the Management of Habitats session where we had talks on various forms of management from Britain (including our own Jenny Joy from Shropshire), Holland, Belgium, Germany and Belize in Central America which I was particularly interested in. I missed out on the session on species conservation which included work on the Purple-Edged Copper in Germany; three presentations on moths; and work on the Butterflies of the Slovakian mountains.

On Saturday afternoon I managed to attend Jeremy Thomas' presentation on the latest work he has done on the Large Blue, which started off the Restoring Species and Habitats session, before I went off to the session on Survey and Monitoring. The Restoration session also included work on the Heath Fritillary; the Chequered Skipper; the Large Copper and the Black Hairstreak In the session I attended we found out about the Monitoring of The Coppice for Butterflies scheme; The Rothamstead Insect survey; the U.K. Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and other surveys. What did come out of this session was the vast amount of data that is being collected by various schemes which could be used by other organisations but is not always readily available, even if it is widely publicised. During the evening the symposium banquet was held in Headington Hill Hall, a very fine building once owned by the late Robert Maxwell. This was a very refined way to unwind after a hard day of listening.

On the last day the morning session concentrated on Issues for the New Millennium. Jim Asher updated us on the Millennium Atlas, thanks to everyone’s hard work it is looking very good. Two papers looked at the expansion of some British butterflies northwards due to an increase in temperature. This made me look forward to receiving some interesting additions to our fauna from continental Europe, but three other papers showed what a bad way European butterflies are in as a whole. There aren't cohorts of butterflies waiting to invade our shores, as the continental land mass closest to us seems to be the worst area in Europe for butterflies. During this session our Chairman gave an excellent talk clearing up some of the confusion surrounding GM crop cultivation and what it may mean to us, our farmers and our butterflies.

This was a excellent, friendly conference which I would thoroughly recommend anyone to attend in the future. After the symposium, since it had been a sunny weekend, eight of us decided to go to Bernwood Forest. We found lots of butterflies, 13 different species including the Brown Hairstreak. A very good end to a stimulating weekend.

Richard Lamb.