Butterfly Conservation has been awarded £727,000 for a project to help farmers improve their land for wildlife and make their business more financially viable at the same time.
The Scotland team will trial a host of experimental techniques at farms in the south of Scotland over the next six years.
The funding has been given as part of the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal - an agreement between English and Scottish governments to invest £452 million to boost the economy around the border.
Butterfly Conservation’s Head of Conservation for Scotland Dr Tom Prescott said: "This is a hugely exciting project for us: with this funding we can employ a dedicated project officer to work with farmers to maintain and enhance habitat for rare butterflies and other wildlife .
"One of the reasons that people love this part of Scotland is that so much of the land is still managed in traditional ways that benefit wildlife, so if we can prove that landowners can maintain and restore important habitats then it preserves that Borders magic for visitors and the people and wildlife that live here."
Butterfly Conservation's project focuses on an endangered butterfly - the Northern Brown Argus.
This delicate orange-and-brown insect used to be much more widespread but its UK distribution plummeted 56% between 1990 and 2018.
This is largely because the Northern Brown Argus caterpillars only eat one plant - the Common Rock Rose - and this is usually only found in species-rich grassland of which some 90% has been lost in the UK in the past century.
Posted On: 18/10/2024
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