Butterfly numbers appear to be at their lowest on record, after rain and warmer weather reduced the chances for butterflies to breed in the UK. This comes on top of a long and worrying trend of decline. To find out what’s happening and what we can all do to help butterflies cope with extreme weather patterns, Phoebe Weston spoke to Dr Richard Fox, science lead at the charity Butterfly Conservation, and Matthew Hayes, who is part of the Banking on Butterflies project, a collaboration between the Insect Ecology Group in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge and the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN).
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