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DUK10122203_009
FEATURE - Seltene Raupen im Britischen Zoo
More than 150 rare caterpillars which have hatched at Chester Zoo are now destined for release into the wild in Manchester and Cheshire, where they have been extinct for a century.
The Chester Zoo butterfly team is working to raise the caterpillars to help prevent their extinction, in partnership with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust.
Each member of the army of freshly hatched “large heath” caterpillars is currently only a couple of millimetres long.
Conservationists at the zoo have been using fine art paintbrushes to move the miniscule species into their specially designed habitats at the zoo.
The paintbrushes allow the zoo’s invertebrate keepers to be precise and delicate when handling the precious insects.
After plenty of eating and growth, the tiny youngsters will hibernate over the winter and pupate next year, emerging in the summer as large heath butterflies.
These adults will be the first to return to areas that their species once called home – the Astley Moss of Manchester and the Risley Moss at Warrington.
Large heath butterflies were once common across the British Isles but over the last 200 years, they have been pushed further and further north. Large colonies previously at home in the boggy mosses of Manchester and Liverpool have long since been lost to local extinction.
As the UK has built its agriculture over the last two centuries, the wet mosslands that the large heath needs to survive have been drained and converted into farmland. As the land dried, the food plants for the butterfly were lost, resulting in a cascade of wildlife disappearance.
The butterfly can be identified by their orange wings, each bearing six black and white ‘eyespots’ on the underside. Conservationists hope to ensure that they will one day be a common sight across the UK once again.
Ben Baker, Team Manager of the Chester Zoo butterfly team, said: “Few people realise that the butterflies we might see in our gardens, forests and mosslands across the
(c) Dukas