A conservation project has received a funding boost to help save one of Britain’s rarest and most critically endangered insects by establishing a new population in Sussex.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the scheme, headed by the charity Buglife, said the wart-biter bush crickets were only found in a few sites in the south of the UK.<\/p>\n
The charity added the support from Defra meant it would help them carry out research to identify a new site. <\/p>\n
Conservation officer Alice Parfitt said the species – named due to a belief it could be used to “cure” warts by eating them – was an important indicator of the health and resilience of the UK’s ecosystems.<\/p>\n
Currently, the crickets are only found in six established sites, four in Sussex, one in Kent and one in Wiltshire.<\/p>\n
The charity said the South Downs was the latest location where wart-biters have been introduced, though the site is yet to be classed as established.<\/p>\n
“Wart-biters have very specific habitat requirements,” Parfitt said. “They need high-quality chalk grassland with varied vegetation and bare ground to lay their eggs.<\/p>\n
“They are omnivorous and depend on species-rich grassland habitats for their food source.”<\/p>\n
Parfitt said if wart-biters thrived in grass chalkland, this meant these rare habitats were healthy.<\/p>\n
“If we can maintain these habitats, it benefits a myriad of other species too including pollinating insects,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A conservation project has received a funding boost to help save one of Britain’s rarest and most critically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}