76% of butterflies vanishing in Britain - a result of climate change

There has been a huge drop in the number of UK butterflies and this could be attributed to climate change. The drop has been of the order of nearly 76% fall in the number of resident and regular migrant butterflies over the past 40 years as revealed in a joint report by charities Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). The drop is 44% in gatekeeper butterflies.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 15 December 2015.

The decline in numbers is a general observation across Europe as a whole but the UK - and southern England in particular - has been worst affected. The reason is still not clear but, in the opinion of experts, the "varied" effects of climate change, deterioration of suitable habitats and increased use of herbicides and pesticides may be major factors responsible for this trend.
Species such as the Wall, Essex Skipper and Small Heath that were once very common, are now among the scarcer types of butterfly in the UK. Some of the factors for this could be increased agricultural farming, including the decline of flower-rich meadows, removal of hedgerows and increased nitrogen being released into the environment.
Foreign species of butterflies are entering because of warmer temperatures and populations of common migrant species - the Clouded Yellow, Red Admiral and Painted Lady - are showing a dramatic increase since the 1970s.

(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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