Large Blue Comeback: extinct UK butterfly surges 1,866%; ecosystem fix drives recovery

A butterfly once declared extinct in Britain is now at the centre of one of the country’s most striking conservation success stories. The large blue, which disappeared from Britain in 1979, has been successfully reintroduced and now occurs at 33 sites in south-west England. New figures from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme show its recorded abundance has risen by 1,866% since 1983. The figures were released by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), alongside analysis from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), which marks 50 years of national butterfly monitoring. The recovery stands out against a much more worrying picture for Britain’s butterflies. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme has collected more than 44 million records from 782,000 volunteers since monitoring began in 1976. Across 59 native butterfly species monitored over the long term, 33 have declined, while 25 have increased and one has insufficient data. The large blue’s comeback was not simply a matter of releasing butterflies back into the countryside. Its disappearance was linked to a complex relationship between the butterfly, its food plants and a particular species of red ant.Why the large ...