A RANGER at the East Cornwall National Trust estate Cotehele has just returned from three weeks gathering data about butterflies with a team at the Ferto-Hansag National Park in Hungary.

James Robbins’ placement was thanks to the National Trust’s Outdoors and Nature Travel Bursary 2015.

James said: ‘I’m really interested in butterflies and I’ve done a lot of work monitoring them at Cotehele. I wanted to find out how other conservation organisations manage and protect the species. The European Conservation Action Network (EUCAN) hooked me up with Dr Andras Ambrus, who is working on a long-term study of butterflies in the national park and the bursary supported me to make the trip.’

The Ferto-Hansag National park on the Hungarian-Austrian border is a 66,000 acre flat, vast landscape with a huge lake, reed beds, grassland, flower meadows and 1,000 grazing cattle. James joined Dr Ambrus and his research students on four sites in the park to ‘mark and recapture’ various species of large blue butterflies, which are rare and declining in Europe. The team collected data to measure butterfly population, life span and the health of the breeding season.

James also assisted in bird ringing of waders in the wetland, bat surveys to log resident species, a dormouse count and a moth project looking for rare species that have not yet been recorded.

James said: ‘It was a great experience and completely different from what I was expecting. I think it was interesting for them to learn from me how the National Trust does conservation work and the protection of species in the UK. For me, it was an opportunity to visit a place I wouldn’t have otherwise gone and to work with like-minded people, but in a different locality.’

James said he and the Ferto-Hansag team spent hours sharing knowledge about conservation practices all towards understanding and conserving the various species.

‘I think we have now built up a strong link between Cotehele and the national park,’ said James. ‘I hope to go back one day and next summer one or two of their rangers may come to Cotehele so they can learn about UK conservation practices from us.’