The Butterfly Foundation, together with the Limburg Water Board and the Limburg Landscape, will make an ultimate rescue attempt on Friday to save the dark blue, an endangered species of butterfly. On Thursday, it was announced that the only habitat of the endangered butterfly was accidentally mowed.
Attempts are now being made to replant pimplenels that grow nearby in the devastated habitat, the Butterfly Foundation explains to NU.nl.
“It is an act of desperation,” said a spokesman. “The butterfly lays its eggs in the flowers and the females are flying around right now. If we didn’t try anything, they would fly away.”
The hope at the foundation is now that the females choose the new plants to lay their eggs. The pimps that are now being replanted in the habitat come from places where the dark pimple-blue did not (yet) lay eggs.
“We put them well in the ground and if it gets too dry, we can always water,” says the Butterfly Foundation about the rescue attempt.
Ant nests are still present
A good sign is that the ant nests in the area still appear to be present. The roadside where the butterfly lived was partly so suitable because of the nests of the common sting ant. The caterpillars survive in the nest of this ant in winter, after which it pupates and emerges from the ground as a butterfly at the end of June.
On Thursday it soon became clear that the field had been mowed away on behalf of the Limburg Water Board. It is the second time in a short time that this has happened by accident and the Butterfly Foundation has therefore reported this.
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