Wildlife enthusiasts have supported a project to save one of the UK’s fastest declining woodland butterflies in the hope it will gain more funding.

In November 2016, wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation (BC) invited the public to vote for its scheme to boost numbers of the delicate Wood White butterfly to put BC in with a chance of receiving £25,000 from the Aviva Community Fund .

We can confirm that, thanks to all of our supporters, we have the most votes in the Environment Category! The judges will now make their final decision on who recieves the funding on Tuesday 10 January 2017.

The Wood White is the smallest of the UK’s white butterflies and can be seen on the wing between May and early July. In warm years, a partial second brood can emerge around August.

The butterfly is found on just 50 sites in the UK and nearly half of these are within the West Midlands, where the ‘Making a Stand for the Wood White’ project is taking place.

BC’s Project Officer, Rhona Goddard said: “We were able to launch this project earlier this year thanks to some generous funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Severn Waste Environmental Fund, but we desperately need this extra boost.

“We have already reintroduced adult butterflies to sites across the region, but now we need to do the conservation work to maintain their habitat over the winter and to create extra habitat to encourage them to spread in to new areas. If BC wins the Aviva Community Fund it will ensure this vital conservation work can continue for the next three years.”

A free talk about the Wood White, the project and how people can get involved is taking place from 7.30pm at Croft Castle on 30 November.

For more information on the project, please email Rhona at: [email protected] or call 01746 762 364.

 

A special thanks to everyone supporting this project:

Heritage Lottery Fund - Thanks to National Lottery players, we invest money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about - from the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife. www.hlf.org.uk @heritagelottery

The Severn Waste Environmental Fund (SWEF) is managed by the charity Welcome to our Future (WTOF) www.wtof.org.uk. The fund, designed to help mitigate the effects of landfill, uses the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme to help local communities in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. For further information about the SWEF, or an application form, please call Bill Richardson on 01386 556222 or email [email protected]

‘Making a Stand for the Wood White’ involves a number of other partner organisations, including the Forestry Commission, the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust, Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre (home of Grow, Cook, Learn), the Duchy of Cornwall, National Trust and English Heritage.