|
Butterflies
of the World - Lifecycle, Ecology, Taxonomy, Conservation,
Photography, Butterfly Holidays, Photo Galleries, Book Reviews and
more.........
Butterfly Study Holidays
Trip Reports
Butterfly Diary - latest sightings Where to find butterflies Frequently Asked Questions Test Your Knowledge Strange but true ! Taxonomy & Evolution Anatomy Lifecycle Ecology Survival Strategies The Enemies of Butterflies Migration & Dispersal Habitats in Britain Rainforests World Butterfly Census Butterfly Books Butterfly Art Gallery Butterfly photography Butterflies of the British Isles Butterflies of the French Alps Butterflies of Amazonia Butterflies of the Andes Butterflies of Malaysia & Borneo Butterflies of West Africa Species index Subject index Glossary
Text and photographs
protected by Copyright © Adrian Hoskins
2007, and must not be published
in part or in whole elsewhere without prior written permission from the
author.
|
![]() | ||||||||
|
The Enemies of
Butterflies
PAGE 3
PAGE 1 - PARASITES and PARASITOIDS
PAGE 2 - PREDATORS
PAGE 3 - HUMANS
Humans
- the greatest enemy of all
Text and photographs protected by Copyright © Adrian
Hoskins 2007-2008 unless otherwise stated, and must not be reproduced or published in part
or in whole elsewhere in any form without written permission from
Adrian Hoskins. Breach of copyright will be pursued by litigation.
Amazon
photographs on this page are copyright-free and in the public
domain.
Website designed, produced and owned by
Adrian Hoskins
A century or so ago, when the human population on Earth was smaller and less affluent, mankind required less land and consumed far less of the planet's resources. Enough contiguous wild habitat existed to ensure that butterflies and other wildlife could move easily between their breeding sites. As the human population has grown, and become increasingly wasteful and greedy, wild places have diminished in size, degraded in quality, and become increasingly fragmented and isolated. All butterfly species have a population threshold. Once the population, and hence the gene pool, shrinks beyond a certain point, the species plunges into a nose-dive, heading towards certain extinction. This begins with a few local extinctions at marginal sites, but within a few years the range of the species contracts towards the areas where the climate is most favourable and the area of suitable contiguous habitat is greatest. The High Brown Fritillary - a butterfly in severe decline By way of example, until the mid 1950's the High Brown Fritillary Argynnis adippe was regarded as a common and widespread butterfly, found in almost all of the larger woodlands of England and Wales. Rapid human expansion after the Second World War brought about the destruction of many of these woodlands, and a change in forestry practice in those that remained.The open sunny coppiced woodlands quickly became replaced with cool, densely shaded conifer plantations, and by 1970 the High Brown Fritillary was a national rarity, found at only a handful of sites scattered across western England. In 2008 the butterfly is on the verge of extinction in Britain, surviving only at a tiny number of small and isolated sites that are managed specifically for this species. Although the High Brown Fritillary is one of the more extreme examples, it acts as an indicator of the type of causes which have resulted in virtually all European butterfly species falling into dramatic decline. The destruction of the rainforests Elsewhere in the world the situation is the same, or worse. The forests of West Africa, India and Madagascar have almost totally disappeared, replaced by agriculture and human habitation. The rainforests of West Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo are expected to have entirely disappeared within 20 years, replaced with vast plantations of oil palm, grown to meet the insatiable demands of the food, cosmetics and bio-fuel industries. Papua New Guinea, home to exotic birds of paradise and incredible Ornithoptera birdwing butterflies is being rapidly deforested to make way for open-cast mining and yet more oil palm plantations. Vast areas of the Amazon have already been burnt down to produce low quality cattle pastures which can only support livestock for about 10 years before desertification occurs. What remains of the Amazon is now under severe threat of destruction from US-based companies which are burning down the forests and replacing them with vast soybean plantations, used to produce bio-fuel - the production and consumption of which releases up to 420 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than fossil fuels.
|