Subject: Welsh butterfly site hits the headlines again

From: Neil Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 96 07:27:38 GMT

Long standing readers of this group may remember the saga of the Selar
Site of Special Scientific Interest in South Wales. To briefly recap
it held a colony of rare Marsh Fritillary buterflies Eurodryas (= Euphydryas)
aurinia. An internationally recognised threatened species. It received a
great deal of publicity, being the lead item on the Welsh TV news for a week,
after a battle between protestors and a mining company Celtic Energy. It
became known as the "Battle of the Butterflies"

As part of the plans the company had moved _some_ of the meadow turf to a
new location nearby. Now the story has hit the headlines again. Part of the
reason that the site had received its SSSI status was the presence of Molinia
caerulea- Potentilla erecta- Cirsium disectum grassland. This is often a key
Marsh Fritillary habitat. The presence of Cirsium on a site is usually an
indication of a higher butterfly population. 

Now Friends of the Earth are running the story that they have discovered
that the company has sent people on to weed the translocated meadow and the
Cirsium disectum has been removed in error! Not only that but some of the
butterfly foodplant Devil's Bit Scabious Succisa pratensis has also been
removed.

The story has received wide coverage on the TV and local press and the
plight of the rare butterfly has again been highlighted.

For further details see the press release on the Swansea FoE web pages
at http://www.digiserve.com/apollo/sfoe.html

-- 
Neil Jones- [email-masked] "The beauty and genius of a work of art
may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed, but when
the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more another heaven
and another earth must pass before such a one can be again." William Beebe