[National Trust Podcast Theme Music]
Hello and welcome to the National Trust Podcast.
I'm Kate Martin.
Lead ranger at Formby in Liverpool.
And today I'm going back in time.
Five years ago in season two
I made my way to the small Snowdonia Village of Beddgelert.
A short walk from this picturesque town is Hafod Garegog nature reserve,
which is home to some rather peculiar winged creatures.
Our story begins deep in the heart of the North
Wales countryside.
[Music Starts – Unfinished Business]
We've just entered
Hafod Garegog Nature Reserve [SFX - Boggy Footsteps]
This is Sabine, a ranger for South Snowdonia.
It's pretty boggy. So watch your step.
Sabine is leading me
through a dense, waterlogged landscape, which is pretty challenging underfoot.
But among the thigh, deep mud and scraps of heather are thorny gorse and
clumps of bog myrtle.
This bog is enclosed in a circle of woodland and towering above us
beyond is the Snowdonia mountain range.
This place is awesome.
Some of us in the team here would call this the jewel in the Snowdonia portfolio.
It's really one of our favorite spots. [SFX - Bird Song]
You just feel like you're in the middle
of a naturalist's candy store.
One of the creatures that calls this candy store home is
the Silver Studded Blue Butterfly.
Each Year, Sabine has to count how many of them are in the area
to make sure that the population isn't in decline. [Music Ends]
[SFX- Bird Song] So we're going to spot where I normally count the butterflies
and I get to tell you why they're such special species [Music Starts - Feather Light 6 String]
[SFX- Insects Moving] Silver studded blues are a tiny little butterfly,
and they've got a really pretty lacy white edge to the underside of their wings.
The Silver Studded Blue butterflies are an endangered species, and although they can be found
around the UK, there are some things that make this a perfect spot
for our winged friends. [Music Ends]
[SFX - Bird Song] The bog has lots of different plants
flowering and the butterflies feed on the nectar from all those flowers.
And when they've done that, they can then lay their eggs on the dry
hills on the heather.
And it's this unique habitat that is partly responsible
for the success of this species in this tiny pocket of Welsh wilderness.
But even this perfect habitat for the butterflies is under threat,
but not by man or pollution, but from Mother Nature herself.
The bog is at threat of getting overgrown with bushes and tall grasses. [SFX - Plants Rustling]
To make sure things stay tip top.
The team have had to bring in some special help.
[Music Start - Hush Hush] [SFX - Cows] Us land managers.
We've brought in cows.
It will come as no surprise that cows are UDDERLY brilliant at grazing.
The way they eat is by rasping at the thick grass and vegetation
with their tongues, and that tears up the landscape
to make a perfect spot for butterflies to nest and lay their eggs.
They do a really good job at that.
That means we've got lots of flowers for the butterflies in the bog.
But just like our overgrowing plants, our cows can also cause
a bit of a headache for the butterflies. [SFX - Hooves Trotting]
The problem is that they go up on the dry hills
and then they trample the eggs and the grubs of the butterfly.
So they can cause a lot of damage to the butterfly population,
even though they're benefiting them by maintaining the flower rich bog.
It's just this complicated balance that you're always
manipulating and playing with. [Music Ends]
So why did the species that needed so much care
and attention choose this rather unforgiving landscape as its habitat?
Well, Silver Studded Blues have a surprising little secret.
[SFX - Gulls, Coastal Sound] This spot used to be coastal
In the olden days.
In 1805, a cob or a seawall was built eight miles away
to reclaim land for agriculture and for industry.
This turned the landscape from a coastal site into an inland nature reserve.
We think that this population is
is a remnant population from when this was a coastal site.
Because of the change of environment
These butterflies need a lot of extra help to keep their habitat in order.
[Music Starts - Exuma] So five years on,
I wanted to find out how the butterflies are faring so far away from the seaside.
We called up lead ranger David Smith to find out more.
[SFX – Phone dialing, Phone being Answered] Hi, David. Hi Kate.
So, David, since we were here in 2017, how have things been going?
Since you were last year in 2017?
The numbers haven't been great, to be honest. [Music Abrupt Pause – Exuma]
They're still there, but
their numbers are pretty low.
We're not really sure why. [Music Resumes – Exuma]
It depends an awful lot just on the weather.
It's a
wetland site and rivers nearby, so it's always quite humid.
At the same time, we're at the foot of the mountain,
so you've got a mountain influence as well.
The temperatures can be fairly extreme, more extreme than coastal
a sea as a sort of leveling effect over in Hafod Garegog it can be very,
very hot and in the winter it can get very, very cold. [Music Ends – Exuma]
[Music Starts – The Streets of Edo] So what hope is there for the future?
Is it going to look any better this time next year, do you think?
I'm hoping that the work that we're doing to manage
the habitat will increase the numbers.
Obviously, that depends
to an extent on our management, but it depends an awful lot
just on the weather, really.
With the weather and climate change causing havoc all around the world,
we have to find out if these butterflies have been affected elsewhere.
So we tracked down some of their coastal cousins in Devon.
We called up our ranger in Salcombe to find out what they do there.
And her answer was a little bit more bionic than bovine.
[SFX – Phone dialing, Phone being answered] Hi, Emma. Hi, Kate. [Music Ends – The Streets of Edo]
So a little birdie tells me you've got some seaside Silver Studded Blues?
Yeah, we have a strong population of Silver Studded
Blue butterflies here on the coast.
Oh, that's good.
So are these ones any different from the ones
we've just been looking at in Wales?
The butterflies here in South Devon are in very different habitat.
Butterflies are in their adult form in the summer
and this habitat is on the lower cliffs.
They're really good warm
microclimates, which the butterflies and lots of other insects survive in.
I Know what it's like being on the coast in the winter.
But those warm microclimates sound absolutely idyllic.
So are there other butterflies there as well? [Music Starts – Ephemeris]
Yes. So we have lots of different butterfly species around the area that have,
you know, flying around and easy to see from the coastal footpaths.
The dark green fritillary is the one of the bigger ones we get,
so they're really beautiful.
They almost look slightly orange when they're flying,
but they're under wings, have got like a bit of a green tinge to it.
And the Red Admiral butterflies are called
that because they've got a big red stripes on their wings.
Theysort of almost look black and white.
When you see them flying. And we get butterflies called Peacocks,
which are quite a sort of maroony red color, and they have beautiful
blue dots on them, which is where they get their name from.
And then there's other species which are yellow, like the Brimstone
butterflies, and we get the crazy looking Orange Tip butterflies,
which literally, like someone has dipped,
the end of their wing into an orange paint pot.
We get a lot of those.
They sound really unusual, but they're actually quite common. As you come
up, the butterflies, some of which will fly around your sort of knee height.
And some of the other species
that are bigger and stronger flyers will be around your head height. [Music Ends - Ephemeris]
With all those colours, you've painted an absolutely gorgeous picture
of what life is like in Salcombe for the butterflies.
[SFX – Gulls calling, Coastal Sea Sounds] The coastal grassland
itself is full of lots of different wildflowers around your feet.
You've got the the yellows and the pinks and the purples, and then also you've
because you're walking along the coast on one side, if you've got that beautiful
blue sea as well, and hopefully a blue sky if you get a good day.
So our little rare Silver Studded, Blues included in that sea of color.
They're actually quite tricky to find.
And you have to go off the beaten track into the little enclosed areas
where they have their colonies on the lower cliffs away from the path.
They sound like they're quite tucked away really...
How do you look after the spots where they live?
Well, the habitats that we have well, anything you want to maintain
in terms of conservation management needs, livestock grazing. The area where
the butterflies are found is fantastic in that we have quite a mix of livestock.
[Music Starts – Talk it Out] Through the winter there's sheep that graze the cliffs
and they're brilliant
because they go right down the steep cliff faces quite happily and they graze
the shorter areas of grassland
and keep it short, which is good for the butterflies.
We also have herds of cattle
and in particular we have Highland cows out there with their big curly horns
and they always look fantastic and they do a great job
because they're a bit more like bulldozers.
They sort of bosh through the scrub and quite happily roam around really,
you know, sort of dense areas of scrub and bashing about which
keeps it under control.
And then we also have Dartmoor ponies on the cliffs out there,
which, again, do a good job.
at sort of grazing the shorter bits of grassland and they create nice sort of tussocky
areas.
So having that mix of grazing is really important.
Ideally, you can't always do it for various reasons.
So not too dissimilar from what they do in Wales then.
But I've got to be honest, cows and cliffs don't really sound like a brilliant mix.
So what do you do to keep on top of the butterflies habitat
The closer you get to the sea? [Music Ends – Talk it Out]
[SFX – Bird Song, Garden Machinery] So we use something called a remote flail.
Remote controls flail or robo flail,
basically...
Well, there's different types of them, but they're a spinning head of metal teeth
so basically rips through anything scrubby
and breaks it up into really small, tiny little pieces. [SFX – Machinery, Plants being cut, Branches Snapping]
It's a fantastic bit of kit that's on Caterpillar tracks.
It's just over a meter wide and probably just under a meter tall.
And the machine is used remotely by an operator
with a control box, and they send it off down the cliffs.
It's got really good grip and it's not particularly big as well,
so it's not got too much weight behind it, which means that you can send it down
quite steep.
Cliff faces and the flail then cuts through
the gorse and blackthorn and shreds it up. [SFX – Machinery, Chainsaw Plants being cut, Branches Snapping]
It means that following spring all of the wildflowers
and the grasslands can come back in those areas that have been cut.
Wow. Well, with all those great big spinning teeth,
it sounds like it's going to be more at home on robot wars.
But why not just let the sheep do what they need to do? [Music Starts – Rainbow Land]
The sheep do a fantastic job, but there's only so much that they can get onto.
And they also won't eat the scrubby bushes
because, you know, they're just feeding on the grass and the wildflowers.
Doing that additional flailing, additional scrub control means that
we get really good pockets of scrub among the grassland.
You can see on cliff areas where that isn't done, you get these huge
great banks of scrub, which means that the light is much more blocked out
and there's no other things of surviving underneath it.
The robotic flail
has been really revolutionary for a lot of our conservation management.
Historically, the...well, the cutting wasn't done
or the farmers or contractors would be in a digger or a crawler
trying to take it onto steep cliffs, which is obviously incredibly dangerous.
So it's just great having to take away the operator risk.
And also
the size of the machine means that you can really get around
a little rocky outcrops and you can get to bits
that would never have been able to be controlled before. [Music Ends – Rainbow Land]
So with all the hard work
that you, the team and our cyborg colleagues are putting in,
how is the future looking like for the Silver Studded Blues in South Devon?
[Music Starts – Exponential] We're really pleased that overall the numbers are going up.
They've been studied locally since 2016, I think it is, and they've been surveyed.
So we've got good data there.
And the trend is that they're increasing the
as with all butterfly species, they are very affected by the weather.
So last year we had quite a wet spring.
The weather was all over the place, so last year's numbers weren't as good.
But the overall trend is an increasing population. [Music Ends – Exponential]
[National Trust Theme Music Starts] Thanks for
listening to this episode of the National Trust Podcast.
To find more of our episodes, go to nationaltrust.org.uk/podcasts,
follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
And while you're there, do leave us a review
and let us know what you think of it.
We'll be back soon with a new episode.
But for now, from me, Kate Martin.
Goodbye. [National Trust Theme Music ends]