Kate Blomfield’s fascination with butterflies began while volunteering for the Kent Wildlife Trust as a teenager.
“I realised just how many species there are in the UK, and how important they are,” said Kate, who has just graduated with a First class degree in Ecology and Conservation from Lancaster.
“The reason I got so interested in butterflies is the idea of them as an environmental indicator. If you can manage the environment right for them, it’s also likely to be good for other species.”
Kate followed her passion during her undergraduate research project, when she did a work placement dissertation, researching how habitat management affected the abundance of two declining butterfly species, the pearl-bordered fritillary (boloria euphrosyne) and the small pearl-bordered fritillary (boloria selene).
She had to work closely with four separate wildlife organisations while doing her fieldwork at the Warton Crag Nature Reserve, 15 miles from the University. It was her successful working relationships with external organisations that won her the Lancaster Environment Centre Innovation Prize for the student who engages best with Enterprise & Business Partnership activities.
The LEC Enterprise & Business Partnership Team, which sponsored Kate’s prize, builds links with external organisations for students to work with on their research projects.
Her hard work and passion for her subject were also recognised when she was also awarded the James Baxter Memorial prize for the student who has shown the most diligence, enthusiasm and progress.
“Being able to do my undergraduate project on two of Britain’s most important butterfly species was brilliant,” said Kate, whose fieldwork examined the impact of conservation management on the two species.
“I was looking at two different sorts of management: cutting down scrub and managing bracken. The actual field work involved setting up plots across the site with vegetation that had been cut at different points in time, and which had different micro-climates.”
She then quantified both the availability of the violets that the lava feed on, and the number of butterflies present in each plot.
She learnt that the two species reacted differently to the different types of management. The pearl-bordered fritillary was doing best in recently cut scrub but didn’t flourish in the bracken, even though the bracken management was being done primarily to help that species.
The smaller butterfly, however, thrived in the bracken but did less well in the managed scrub.
Kate valued the feedback and support she got from staff at Warton Crag, and hopes her findings, alongside fieldwork being done by two Lancaster Masters students, will feed into the conservation management of the site.
“They are thinking of reviewing their bracken management, and cutting a lot more of the scrub,” Kate said. “It was really great, I felt like I was doing something that could make a difference and had real world implications.”
Kate also developed key skills that will help her find employment: “I developed my species identification, project management and other practical skills, as well as gaining experience working with all the different site managers.
“I had to do a presentation to the site managers, and also gave a presentation to a Butterfly Conference at the University.”
Kate is volunteering with the Scottish Wildlife Trust over the summer, and is hoping to do a Masters by research back in LEC this autumn.
“I’m thinking of continuing to research the pearl-bordered fritillary butterfly. It’s fascinating because its habitat requirements are so specific and, though a lot is known about these, there is a knowledge gap about what to do to reverse its decline.”