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NATURAL HAS NO DOUBTS CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE

The red admiral now lives here all year round

Friday September 5,2008

By John Ingham

HURRICANES queueing up in the Atlantic, freak weather from the dullest August ever, the wettest two summers on the trot... but there are plenty of climate change sceptics out there.

So what do some of our most delicate creatures think?

Butterflies care nothing for fancy theories, political agendas or whingeing lobbyists. They just want to survive.

And their behaviour shows that climate change is here.

Species are spreading northwards, Mediterranean migrants staying all year and mountain specialists retreating ever higher.

The comma butterfly ventured no further north than the Midlands 30 years ago but now thrives in Edinburgh, Butterfly Conservation expert Richard Fox told a Royal Entomological Society conference at Plymouth University yesterday.

The northerly limit of the speckled wood has moved from Manchester to the Tyne, its neighbour to the holly blue has reached the Borders and the orange tip has spread from there to Inverness.

North African migrant the red admiral now lives here all year round.

However, our most northerly species are in trouble. The northern brown argus and the Scotch argus have retreated 60 miles northwards while the mountain ringlet has moved nearly 500ft higher since the Seventies because the habitat is just too hot.

The successful butterflies may thrive but 75 per cent of our species are declining, mostly because their habitats are being destroyed.

They include the chalkhill and silver-studded blues and the Duke of Burgundy.