Rare creature seen laying eggs in Wales decades after going locally extinct
After receiving a report about the presence of a rare insect in Wales, a team of conservationists got to work surveying the area. Their efforts paid off — and revealed a “new hope” for a species that went locally extinct decades ago.
Clare Boyes, the Montgomeryshire county recorder for a butterfly conservation group, learned about a sighting of a wood white butterfly near Newtown in early May and immediately knew she needed to investigate, the organization Butterfly Conservation said in an Aug. 13 news release.
Wood whites are “one of the rarest butterflies in the (United Kingdom),” the organization said. “The species used to have a permanent colony in south-east Wales but that died out several decades ago and there have only been sporadic sightings since.”
Boyes coordinated with Natural Resources Wales to survey some sites around Newtown. With their permission, the fieldwork took place in July and included Boyes, volunteer Richard Bullock and Alan Sumnall, the organization’s head of conservation for Wales.
Scouring the forests, the team eventually documented several more wood white butterflies, “including a female laying eggs,” at three additional locations, the organization said.
A photo shows one of these “delicate cream-coloured” butterflies. “Its wings have furry edges,” the group said, and its antennae are “striped.”
The wood white butterflies in Wales “almost certainly” originated from a nearby region of England where conservationists are “doing targeted conservation work to maintain Wood White populations,” Butterfly Conservation said.
Wood white butterflies used to be more widespread in the U.K. but their distribution “declined by 76 per cent between 1992 and 2019” due to habitat loss, the group said.
The recent sightings of wood whites “is new hope for the species in Wales,” Butterfly Conservation said.
“This is really exciting news for us,” Sumnall said in the release. “Butterflies have suffered terribly in recent years because of human actions, but now we have a real success story — a new species for Wales — and what’s more it’s the result of fantastic, targeted conservation work by our team.”
“We always love to see butterflies and moths doing well in the UK,” Dan Hoare, the director of nature recovery with Butterfly Conservation, said in the release.
The organization plans “to do further surveys next spring” to continue monitoring the wood white butterfly around Newtown.
Newtown is in central Wales, near the border with England and a roughly 190-mile drive northwest from London.
This story was originally published August 18, 2025 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Rare creature seen laying eggs in Wales decades after going locally extinct."
