UK witnesses large butterflies comeback
Large blue butterflies were driven to extinction in Britain 30 years ago, but now they’re making a comeback, thanks to some loving care from conservationists. Down a track, through beech woods so thick you must turn on your car headlights, lies a secret meadow, full of flowers. Mauve scabious and darker purple knapweed wave their heads in the aftermath of summer thunderstorm. This insect, which baffled conservationists for more than a century because of its strange and wonderful life cycle, became extinct in Britain in 1979. In the following decade, two scientists brought it back to life: Jeremy Thomas, professor of ecology at Oxford University, worked out exactly what it needed to survive; and David Simcox, a conservation consultant for the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, drove his VW Campervan to an island in Sweden, collected some eggs from the large blues that fly there, and released caterpillars in Devon and Somerset, south-west England. The large blue, which is globally endangered, now flies at sites in Somerset in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world. 
After pioneering that first ever successful reintroduction of a butterfly driven to extinction in Britain, Thomas and Simcox, with assistance from everyone from the National Trust and Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust to Holland and Barrett, is this summer attempting an ambitious second phase. They want to help the large blue move north, to the Cotswolds, where it hasn’t flown for 50 years. So far, so straightforward, but establishing a new colony of these unique butterflies is an almost unimaginably delicate and labor-intensive operation. If it goes well, this secret site will next year dance with five different species of blue butterfly. It would be pointless, Simcox agrees, if these rare butterflies had nowhere else to go, but this reintroduction is the first step in a landscape-scale project. There are other suitable sites nearby and, with luck, clever land management and the funding to pay for it, this rare butterfly, and other wildlife, will spread naturally, enriching our meadows and animating our summers, without our help at all.
— The Guardian
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