Wildflower meadows are key to restoring the habitat

Patricia Zurita, CEO of BirdLife International, is guest editor for Call to Earth's Nature's Highways theme.

CNN Imagine traveling vast distances through a barren wilderness without access to food or water. That's the challenge facing many flying insects in the UK.

The country's insect populations are in a decline. The results of a recent survey by the conservation group Buglife and the Kent Wildlife Trust showed that the number of flying insects in the UK has fallen by nearly 60% in the last 17 years. Around 20 bee and wasp species have gone extinct in the last 100 years and half of UK butterfly species are now threatened, according to the charity Butterfly Conservation.

Infamous insects are threatened with extinction, and up to 10% of them are threatened with extinction. The use of pesticides and climate change are some of the factors that are linked to the devastation, while large areas of key habitats have been lost to intensive agriculture and other development, according to Jamie Robins, programme manager at Buglife.

The UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s. This affects pollinating insects but also animals that feed on insects such as birds, hedgehogs and bats.

Although our countryside is green and beautiful and vibrant, if there aren't many flowers it's quite a hostile environment for our insects to move across, says Kate Jones, a conservation officer at Buglife.

Buglife has identified 150,000 hectares of 580 square miles of land in the UK that it wants to restore to wildflower meadows. The hope is that these meadows can be connected to a nationwide insect commuter network, called B-lines, which will provide nectar-rich pit stops for pollinators.

These floral stepping stones should be no more than 300 meters apart, based on the average commuting distance of a solitary bee, to make sure they can move from site to site, Robins explains.

The B-lines project, funded in part by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, began in 2011 and began in 2011. Buglife mapped out the best connections between existing wildflower sites across the UK and created the first nationwide B-lines map, which was launched in March 2021, using software developed by the University of Washington.

B-lines has restored just over 2,500 hectares of wildflower-rich grasslands in the network. It is only a small portion of the 150,000 hectares targeted, and restoring wildflowers can be difficult. Claire Carvell, a senior ecologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, says native wildflowers tend to struggle to establish in areas of rich and fertile farmland, and pollinators need a wide range of flowers across all seasons.

The project has enlisted the help of wildlife trusts, local authorities and farmers and estate owners because of the network's wind through public and private land.

Buglife is providing farmers and landowners with guidance to grow wildflower-rich grasslands, along with a 10 year maintenance plan. They are the ones who can make a difference. Robins says they can restore the habitat that they have by giving up small areas of their land to wildflowers.

Carvell believes that the B-lines initiative is an important addition to the government-led incentives and that it provides effective support to farmers and councils for the restoration process.

She says that planting wildflower-rich hedgerows and grasslands not only helps insects, but also helps farmers. She says that farmers are benefiting from managing their land in a way that's positive for bees, flies, and also all the predatory insects or insects that are providing a natural pest control service to their crops.

She adds that we all have a role to play. It is wonderful to be able to contribute something.