BUTTERFLY Conservation is celebrating the completion of an £8,000 project to help Chalk Hill Blues, Brown Hairstreaks and Grizzled Skippers in Somerset - a fence.
The charity has erected the new 850-metre boundary around its popular and picturesque Stoke Camp nature reserve in the rolling Mendip Hills.
The fence is not to keep in butterflies, but the all-important cows and sheep that graze the vegetation and create perfect habitat for a host of rare and vulnerable species.
Butterfly Conservation South West Landscape Officer Dr Max Anderson said: "This might look like just a shiny new fence to most people, but to us this represents the future: making sure the livestock on this site are secure means we can confidently carry on grazing here for another 10 years and help precious rare species recover from decades of damage done by destruction of their natural habitats and overuse of pesticides."
Stoke Camp, 40 minutes south of Bristol, is an 11-hectare nature reserve of rare limestone grassland rising to a height of 265 metres on the Mendip ridge.
Popular with visitors, the top of the hill is surrounded by the earthworks of an Iron Age enclosure and there are majestic views towards Glastonbury Tor and the Seven estuary.
Butterfly Conservation has managed the site to protect its butterflies and moths for years, and in 2018 the charity recorded 26 species including Chalk Hill Blue, Small Blue, Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper and Wall.
Within the Mendip Hills and throughout their range, those five species are facing significant threats including habitat loss and climate change which are causing declines in abundance and distribution.
Even more importantly, Stoke Camp forms part of the huge Mendip National Nature Reserve established in 2023: a network of 31 sites including Cheddar Gorge and covering 1,413 hectares of land that is managed by nine organisations including The National Trust, Natural England and Butterfly Conservation.
Protecting this network means that rare species living at each site can travel to neighbouring sites, which stops each population getting isolated and creates greater resilience for the ecosystem.
They key to the success of butterflies at Stoke Camp is the help they get from some much bigger animals.
Butterfly Conservation works with a local farmer who grazes sheep and Highland Cattle on the site and these animals perform vital jobs, eating scrub plants that could otherwise take over the grassland habitat and leaving manure which helps valuable species.
Even the animals' hoof-prints create the perfect micro-environments for horseshoe vetch - the only plant that the caterpillars of Chalk Hill Blue can eat.
In order to safely graze the site, it is essential to have a sturdy fence, but the last time the fence at Stoke Camp was replaced was 10 years ago and it was needing more and more repairs.
Butterfly Conservation secured funding for the project from Valencia Communities Fund, a charity that distributes grants from the Landfill Communities Fund.
The new stock-proof fence, with solid chestnut posts, took six weeks to install in September and October, and should now keep the site secure for another decade at least.
The project was helped at every stage by dedicated local volunteers John Ball and Peter Bright, who have worked as honorary wardens for Stoke Camp for years and also run volunteer conservation work parties to maintain the precious habitat.
Max added: "We're all so delighted that we have got this project completed and helped secure the future of the site and the species that live here.
"We love this site because we love butterflies, but they are also vitally important to the environment: they pollinate a wide range of crops and other plants, but they are also invaluable indicators of the wider health of the environment. If butterflies are doing well, it's a very good sign that the whole ecosystem is doing well, too."
To find out more about Stoke Camp and plan a visit go to butterfly-conservation.org/our-work/reserves/stoke-camp-somerset
To find out more about volunteering opportunities at Stoke Camp and other Butterfly Conservation sites in the area go to somersetbristolbutterflies.org.uk