8 days ago, on the 31st of March, the All the Moor Butterflies project ended. I've spent the last 3 years (1186 days!) working on this wonderful project with my brilliant colleague @naturemeg. As I've had some time to reflect I want to share with you some of what we achieved.
We worked with 146 landowners across 201 sites to deliver advice and management for 6 rare and threatened butterfly and moth species. 841 site visits were carried out, covering monitoring, habitat assessments and management work. We worked with some amazing farmers!
We also worked with some amazing species located in breathtaking moorland landscapes. I will forever remember the beautiful locations I was lucky enough to visit. Shown here are Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Marsh Fritillary, Heath Fritillary and High Brown Fritillary.
Three positive species stories to come from the project were: the Pearl-bordered Fritillary doing well on Dartmoor, the Heath Fritillary having its best ever year in 2018 on Exmoor and discovering 29 new Marsh Fritillary sites on Bodmin Moor. These landscapes are special!
We improved 117 hectares of habitat with our amazing partners, such as the @NTSouthWest teams at Heddon Valley, Holnicote & Castle Drogo. We worked on 165 hectares with our amazing volunteers. Volunteers can and do make vital contributions to keeping these species going!
Speaking of volunteers, we were supported by our amazing volunteer run Branches. @Cornwall_BC, @BCDevon & @BCSomerset. They helped with funds and provided expertise that was invaluable to the success of the project.
Our Branch volunteers and project volunteers helped to count 13,243 adult butterflies. This data was vital as it enabled us to direct our management work to where it was needed and assess whether it was working. Monitoring is essential to good conservation!
It was important to us that these special species and places were shared with people. @naturemeg led on this side of the project and she did an incredible job. Over 5100 people were reached by the project. This included over 300 volunteers.
The project spent a lot of time reaching out to groups who would ordinarily struggle to explore these landscapes. One particularly inspiring partnership was with the Devon Recovery Learning Community. They used butterflies as a metaphor for recovery.
None of this wonderful work would have been possible without the support of our funders, particularly the brilliant @HeritageFundUK. Also: @dartmoornpa @ExmoorNP @CornwallAONB @NE_DCIoS, Environment Agency, @DartmoorDPA, @papillongin and our lovely Branches.
To celebrate the project we produced a short film with @ninaconstable. I urge you take 7 minutes out of your day and watch it. It tells the stories of the project and is wonderfully inspiring. You can watch it on the projects webpage: https://butterfly-conservation.org/our-work/conservation-projects/england/all-the-moor-butterflies
I hope you enjoyed this thread & that it gave you a flavour of what we achieved during the project. The project showed me that wildlife & farming can work together to produce rich landscapes. It also showed that involving people is key & vital in bringing these places to life.
You can follow @SimonPhelps_BC.
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