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<DIV><FONT size=2><STRONG>Europe's butterfly havens are
vanishing</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>3/18/06</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Full article in New Scientist, at: </FONT><A
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?hbxmail=nl&id=mg18925432.800"><FONT
size=2>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?hbxmail=nl&id=mg18925432.800</FONT></A></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Vanishing wet grasslands are making a nonsense of the European
Union's plan to halt biodiversity loss by 2010, if the alarming decline in
butterflies is anything to go by.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Since the 1990s, Martin Warren of Butterfly Conservation in
the UK and his colleagues in the Netherlands have been gathering information on
butterfly distribution in 45 European countries. They have found serious
declines in almost every country, with 71 of the total 576 species now classed
as threatened.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Now the team has classified butterfly fortunes by habitat and
found that the areas occupied by specialist wetland or forest species shrank by
about 15 per cent in the past 25 years. Grassland butterflies have fared even
worse, their distribution shrinking by 19 per cent (<I>Journal of Insect
Conservation</I>, vol 10, p 189).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>******************************************</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Another article on the same subject: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><STRONG>Fears for survival of Europe's
butterflies</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Fordyce Maxwell;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Full article in The Scotsman, at: </FONT><A
href="http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=398642006"><FONT
size=2>http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=398642006</FONT></A></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>RESEARCHERS have warned that more than 70 species of European
butterfly might become extinct if changes to their environment
continue.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Species threatened by grazing animals and wetland drainage
include the beautiful Marsh Fritillary of Scotland's west coast and the Large
Heath, found in bogland across north Britain.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Martin Warren of Butterfly Conservation UK, who led the
research, said the fear was that disappearing butterfly species are "the tip of
the insect iceberg". Falling insect numbers also has a knock-on effect on birds,
for which they are a source of food.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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<DIV><FONT
size=1>______________________________________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><STRONG>The Xerces Society for Invertebrate
Conservation</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=1>
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