be allowed to jeopardise hard-won wildlife refuges. Markets must be regulated and at the very least new private owners must be prevented from destroying known sites and encouraged to manage and create more wildifefriendly areas. Enforcement and administration of this will cost money, and this might cast doubt upon the economics of the sell-off anyway ... But we can do much better than this. The govenunent ought genuinely to put the interests of its citizens and their quality of life first, by foregoing the arguable and comparatively minute benefits which might accrue from privatisation, and instead encouraging both the new public forests and providing incentives for new productive woodland, perhaps on what is now inadequately described as 'set-aside' fannland? Better yet - why not make all the FC lands into National Parks and beef up the conservation and leisure interests ?
If you want to stay ideologically pure, you could charge people a modest fee for using these areas and thereby defray the expenses of managmg and maintaining them.
learnt that some butterflies were absent from Suffolk, for example Adonis and Chalkhill Blue and all the Fritillaries. When autumn came we could hardly wait for the 1989 butterfly season to begin. April 1989 gave us the joy of butterfly watching in Portugal, including our first-ever Swallowtail in a near-gale on the cliffs at Cape Vincent. Then back to England to begin recording what we saw, and to start building up a serious photographic record.
If any government wanted to do something just once for which posterity would thank them, this would be a wonderful opportunity. Just think, by this means you could more than double the amount of land protected from encroaching development and unsustainable exploitation, whilst expanding both timber production and leisure resources. It would be a marvellous step forward, cost no more than is already envisaged and really show that Britain meant what it said at Rio.
When Michael was a boy, his father told him that the only place in England where the Swallowtail existed was in part of the Norfolk Broads. So we took a day trip to the Nature Reserve at Hickling Broad and eventually saw our first English Swallowtails. How can one describe the thrill? They are much bigger than I had imagined, flying strongly against the wind, spiralling upwards in what seems to be courtship flight, and incredibly beautiful when they settle to nectar or rest. Michael took some good photographs of Swallowtails which obligingly basked in the sunshine. Three years later, not one settled long enough to be taken! A month later we saw our first Holly Blue. I didn't even know there was such a butterfly! We were delighted when we tracked it down in the book and discovered its name. We first found it by its pale blue underside, lightly dotted with black spots. Ours was a female, upper wings deep mauvy-blue with broad browny-black edges. The following year we saw male Holly Blues and learnt that their upper wings don't have dark edges. As the years have gone by the excitement of seeing our "first ever" species have continued. Butterfly watching is an enthralling occupation and one learns so much. The more we learn the more we realise how inuch lies ahead. We are greatly enjoying the superb book by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Lewington about British butterflies which is packed with infonnation. If you haven't begtm watching already, do start! If you have been watching for years, take a beginner with you!
Come on, let's lead the world, let's practise what we preach and set an example to nations now destroying their forests. Let's do the right thing - we can't afford not to. Andrew Phillips
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Purdis Heath scrub clearance Why would over thirty people tum out on a freezing Sunday morning in November to hack down birch saplings on a piece of apparent waste ground on the Eastern outskirts of Ipswich ? Well they did, and they achieved far more than was expected. In fact we cleared - and faggot bundled - well over an acre of land that used to be the favoured breeding area of what is now the strongest remaining colony of the Silver-studded Blue (Plebejus argus) left in Suffolk.
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A few do's and don'ts for butterfly learners: Do go with someone else. It's much more fun. Do take a book-a little handguide is useful. Don't take the dog - it will msh up and disturb your best butterfly just as you begin to identify it. Do take binoculars. It's amazing how useful they can be. Don't mind if you fail sometimes. We've got all the time there is for future attempts. Do enjoy your butterfly watching.
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Useful books:
The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland. Jeremy Thomas & Richard Lewington. The Mitchell Beazley pocket guide to butterflies. Paul Whalley. A handgwde to the Butterflies and Moths o/Brilain and Europe. John Wilkinson and Michael Tweedie. Jenny Kelsey
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