High Brown Fritillary, near St Anton, Austria

As a member of Butterfly Conservation I am only too keenly aware of the sharp decline in many species of butterflies over both the long and short term. A few will benefit from climate change, but many will fail to move to more suitable climates and habitat as the local conditions change and will die out alas locally, and if that happens on a wide scale, that can lead to extinction nationally and globally.

Butterflies are key indicators of the state of nature - if they go then many other species are probably threatened. Its often the case that a species dies out because of the loss of another it depends on (and not always in any obvious relationship - its often very complex).