2010 and beyond for Lepidoptera

Abstract

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was an outcome of the ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In 2002 the Convention committed the European Union (EU) and (currently) 192 other countries ‘‘to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level’’ (Anonymous 2010). The EU set an even more ambitious target: ‘‘...to protect and restore habitats and natural systems and halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010...’’ (Anonymous 2001). In March 2010, Butterfly Conservation held its 6th International Symposium on the topic, ‘The 2010 Target and Beyond for Lepidoptera’, to assess progress towards the target, report advances in conservation science, and look to the future. This volume presents a collection of papers from that meeting. Evidence presented at the Symposium from across the world was bleak, with no evidence that the EU and CBD target had been met (Asher et al. 2011; Brereton et al. 2011; Caritg et al. 2011; Fox et al. 2011; Groenendijk and Ellis 2011; Lewis and Senior 2011; Nakamura 2011; Safian et al. 2011; Stefanescu et al. 2011). At the global scale the general trend for Lepidoptera is one of decline, and the overall trend for biodiversity is of a continuous and accelerating decline. In May 2010 the CBD published its overall assessment of progress towards the 2010 target and reported failure (Anonymous 2010). The 2002 CBD and EU targets were ambitious, and, despite not being met, they did manage to place conservation and biodiversity firmly on global and national political and development agendas and provided mechanisms for raising public awareness. Failure can be a powerful stimulus to renewed action, especially if the reasons for failure are identified. New CBD 2020 targets are now being formulated (Djoghlaf 2010) alongside a vision for 2050. Initial progress suggests there will be a much closer integration of biodiversity with climate change adaptation/mitigation, ecosystem services, human health and the economic benefits of biodiversity (Djoghlaf 2010). Papers in this collection examine some of the likely impacts of climate change on Lepidoptera (e.g. de Vries et al. 2011; Wilson and Maclean 2011). Whilst climate change is an issue and will become an even bigger issue in the future, biodiversity loss is already a problem and likely to become worse unless measures are taken now. For some Lepidoptera there is a real and imminent threat of local, regional and global extinction. For such species, urgent action is needed now and climate change is a distant threat. The papers here outline the issues, and some demonstrate how approaches based on sound conservation science can improve the status of species, both preventing imminent extinction and making populations more resilient to future climate change (e.g. Ellis et al. 2011; Porter and Ellis 2011). Meeting the new CBD targets, will require well researched solutions and this volume contains contributions to the challenges ahead under the broad headings of the Science of Conservation Management and Landscape-scale Conservation. Jeremy Thomas, for example, distills a lifetime of experience working with endangered species to identify key factors of importance in butterfly conservation J. W. Dover (&) Institute for Environment, Sustainability and Regeneration, Staffordshire University, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE, UK e-mail: j.w.dover@staffs.ac.uk