New
charity warns Britain’s largest butterfly could be lost within four decades as
rising seas turn its habitat into saltmarsh
Fri
29 Jun 2018 12.27 BSTLast modified on Fri 29 Jun 201813.40 BST
Britain’s
biggest butterfly, the swallowtail, could become extinct within four decades
because of rising sea levels, a new charity has warned.
New
inland habitat needs to be created for the swallowtail because
rising seas are predicted to turn much of its current home, the Norfolk Broads,
into saltmarshes later this century.
The
British swallowtail caterpillar’s only food plant, milk parsley, cannot survive
in saltwater, and so the plant and the butterfly will need to be translocated
to the Cambridgeshire fens, according to butterfly experts.
“At
least 90% of the current swallowtail breeding sites will become salt marsh with
a sea level rise of 50cm,” said Mark Collins, chair of the Swallowtail and Birdwing Butterfly Trust,
a new charity working to save the 500 swallowtail and birdwing butterfly
species worldwide. “We could be looking at 30 or 40 years and these sites will
be gone, given the rate of sea-level rise and also tidal surges and ‘salination
events’, where saltwater comes rushing up the Broads’ rivers.”
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