Award for building materials company in helping the Small Blue

Building materials company CEMEX UK has won a special award for its work in helping the survival of the Small Blue butterfly in Warwickshire.

It has received specialist national charity Butterfly Conservation’s Promotion of Lepidoptera Conservation Award, which is for outstanding contributions by an individual or an organisation.

Butterfly Conservation says Warwickshire is the last Midlands county where the Small Blue survives, although numbers here have declined by 87 per cent in recent years.

CEMEX UK’s involvement with helping conserve the species in Warwickshire started in 2007 by funding a recovery project. This included conservation work on a site to enable Kidney Vetch – the food plant for Small Blue caterpillars – to grow, and also enabled colonisation by another vulnerable species, the Grizzled Skipper.

The building materials company then became a major partner in Butterfly Conservation’s Bringing Back the Small Blue project. Currently half way through, the project is involving work at a minimum of 18 Warwickshire sites to improve habitat for Small Blue and other butterfly species. So far, a further three sites have been colonised by Small Blue butterflies.

Butterfly Conservation’s chief executive Dr Martin Warren described CEMEX UK’s work to conserve the Small Blue in Warwickshire as ‘a marvellous example of how industry can help our declining wildlife’.

CEMEX UK’s community affairs manager Ian Southcott said: ‘It is brilliant that our habitat work with the Small Blue has achieved tremendous results. This award coincides with the launch of CEMEX UK’s biodiversity strategy that will see the establishment of 1,000 hectares of priority habitat up to 2020.’