Creating a future for the High Brown Fritillary

Aim

Join our urgent mission to prevent the extinction of one of the UK's most threatened species. Donate today to protect butterflies and moths!

We choose to save one of the UK’s most threatened butterflies. Will you help?

The High Brown Fritillary is one of the UK’s most threatened butterflies. Since 1978 the species has declined by a bleak 65% in population and a huge 87% in distribution across the UK, primarily caused by habitat destruction and inappropriate management.

Endangered on the Red List of Butterflies (an assessment of extinction risk of our butterflies), without urgent, drastic conservation action, the High Brown Fritillary faces a real threat of extinction. However, we can stop this – but we can’t do it without you.

We face a choice. Do nothing and allow this majestic species to disappear or secure the future of the High Brown using our expert conservation action. We choose a future, will you?

We must protect this dramatically declining butterfly. We have ambitious plans but we urgently need your support. Please consider a donation today to support this project and help save other butterflies and moths throughout the UK.

After a 61% loss of colonies across the Southwest, the last remaining High Brown stronghold in Southwest England is in Heddon Valley, Exmoor,  but these colonies continue to suffer significant reduction from the east. They urgently need protecting to ensure that the species can survive in this area.

We are partnering with the National Trust to restore this landscape and increase the resilience of this population. But we can’t stop there. We must create new areas for the High Brown to expand into, creating bigger, better, more joined habitats and, by focusing on one landowner there is the largest scope to make the most progress. This is the only way to create a sustainable future for the High Brown.

We have identified 10 further key National Trust sites, where new colonies could establish in the future, allowing the butterfly to spread west to east. Urgent landscape restoration is needed and it is needed right now before further losses occur.

With your support, we will deploy our targeted conservation action to transform these sites, educate staff, volunteers and communities and create havens for the High Brown to expand into.  But we can only do this with your help.

Please consider a donation today to help us protect the future of the High Brown Fritillary and secure the fates of other butterflies and moths throughout the UK.

From near extinction….to expansion.

Changing the fate of one of the UK’s most threatened butterflies requires scientifically driven, targeted conservation action. We plan to deliver restoration work across large areas, trialling new management techniques in woodland areas to create more breeding habitat and providing routes for them to move beyond the Heddon Valley into new sites. We have the expertise to carry out the work – and you have the power to make it happen.  Please show your support and donate today to protect the future of the High Brown.

See here how we’ll change the fate of the High Brown Fritillary.

Your donation will help Butterfly Conservation on our vital mission to save butterflies, moths and the environment all over the UK.

This project successfully funded on 10th January 2024