I Love Stories Like This,

in the UK a butterfly that was extinct has successfully been reintroduced,

photograph the Royal Entomological Society, the large blue, (Phengaris arion), was declared extinct in the UK in 1979, four years later caterpillars were brought from Sweden in an attempt to reintroduce the species in England, research ecologist David Simcox, one of the duo who reintroduced the butterfly in 1983, said it was "incredibly satisfying" to see them now thriving, "I didn't have a grey hair on my head when I started. Now it's all grey," back in the 1980s Mr Simcox and his colleague, Oxford University professor Jeremy Thomas, did not expect this type of success, "Obviously you have hope, but the first 10 years were difficult, the national population was under 10,000 eggs," Mr Simcox explained, in contrast, this summer conservationists counted 750,000 large blue butterfly eggs, from those, they estimated that around 20,000 butterflies flew, making the south-west of England the largest known colony in Europe, the butterfly has a really strange life cycle, for some of it living in an ant colony! it spends most of the year as a caterpillar inside red ant nests where it feeds on grubs. This lifecycle makes it more challenging to protect, "This success shows that if we can understand the ecological requirements of very rare and difficult species, we can turn back the trend of decline," Mr Simcox explained, but while the large blue butterflies are now doing well, they remain endangered and their long-term future uncertain, he warned, for the full story have a look here.