Meadows and pollinators
The meadows and pastures are some of our most species-rich habitats. In addition to a high diversity of flowers and fungi, these lands are also an important habitat for pollinators, butterflies and birds, among others. In the past, there were plenty of flower-rich environments such as meadows and pastures, but they have declined drastically, along with the species that live there. Less than one percent of meadows remain today compared to hundred years ago.
In the past, meadows were vital to provide fodder for the animals in the winter. The meadow was cut with a scythe and when the grass had dried it was removed from the meadow. The fact that the plant material is removed results in lean and nutrient-poor soils, something that enables many different plants to coexist without a single plant species "taking over".
As agriculture has been rationalized, the conditions for the meadow and natural pastures have changed. Winter fodder for the animals is now grown in fields instead of in the meadow, and the former function of the meadow has disappeared. This has lead to that former meadows and natural pastures have overgrown, been converted into fields or planted with forests.
When meadows disappear, many kinds of flowers and the habitat for many butterflies and other animals also disappear. More than a quarter of the red-listed species in Sweden depend on open grasslands for their survival. One species group that has been heavily effected by increasingly large-scale and intensified agriculture and forestry, is our butterflies. Almost a third of the butterfly species are red-listed, with two species, the Assmann's fritillary and the Reverdin's blue, feared to be nationally extinct and many others having declined greatly.
What does Nordens Ark do?
Nordens Ark works on several fronts to preserve meadows and their inhabitants. In our Ecopark, we restore around 300 hectares of land where we work to recreate an open landscape with the help of our grazing native breeds. We also recreate many meadows by mowing and sowing meadow flowers. Examples of two species are sticky catchfly and ragged robin, which are very important nectar plants for bees, bumblebees, butterflies, and other wild pollinators.
To save some of Sweden's most threatened butterfly species, Nordens Ark works with breeding and reintroduction. The aim is to build a rescue populations for species such as the clouded Apollo and the chequered blue, in order to be able to produce a large number of individuals for release into restored habitats. All work takes place within the framework of the action programs for threatened species in close cooperation with the relevant county administrations.
News from the project - March 2024
During fall 2023, we started a new and exciting collaboration with the company Maria Nila and their Friendly Year Campaign. For one year they will support our work with pollinators and thanks to this collaboration we can now do even more for these small but important creatures.
Among other things, we will create several new meadows, both in the Ecopark but also inside the zoological park. By establishing meadows and planting flowering plants, we expect to go from having only a few species on the former spruce plantation to over fifty species on the meadow, and then we have only counted the plant species. We will also build a large number of mineral soil surfaces. This is sun-exposed patches, bare or sparsely vegetated with dry sandy or mineral soil, which is an important environment type for wild pollinators and often very species-rich.
Soon we will also build another specially adapted breeding facility for endangered butterflies. It gives us the opportunity to expand our breeding, which will result in us being able to breed more individuals for release into the wild.
