GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Multinational food company Nestlé is giving a boost to birds, bees and other critters in Britain by creating wildflower spaces to help offset the fall in their numbers.
The company announced 24 July that will plant wildflower meadows at all of its factories in the UK by 2015.
It has already created meadows at five factories: in Girvan, Scotland; Fawdon, Northumberland; Buxton, Derbyshire; Tutbury, South Derbyshire; and Dalston, Cumbria.
Nestlé UK & Ireland will co-ordinate the planting of nearly 75 acres of butterfly meadows – the equivalent of almost 250 football pitches, it notes – with the aim of attracting more than 10 varieties of butterflies to the sites.
Head of Neslte UK & Ireland sustainability Inder Poonaji, is joined by pupils from nearby Cardew School in planting new butterfly meadow at Nestle Dalston, Cumbria (photo copyright 2013, Nestlé UK / Richard Walker/ImageNorthNestlé employees, their families and local schools have begun planting meadows with experts from local branches of Natural England, the Wildlife Trust and Butterfly Conservation.
A mobile app for company employees is soon to be launched, that they “can use to record butterfly sightings. Data from the app will be made available to local nature and wildlife organisations, to support the monitoring of butterfly numbers across the UK,” says Nestlé.
The company expects the new meadows at its 13 sites across the country to attract a variety of wildlife, including different species of butterflies – numbers of which are currently in decline in the UK .
Butterfly numbers are declining in the UKNestlé is also working with a group of dairy farmers who supply its factory in Girvan, Scotland, to plant wildflowers on their land.
The project hopes to attract varieties such as the Large White (Pieris brassicae) Red Admiral (Vanessa Atalanta), the Small Copper, Wall Brown and the Meadow Brown.
The company has established a set of criteria for each site around planning, maintaining and improving the meadows. They include employee, community and external expert engagement, correct seeds to plant and how the butterflies are monitored. Each meadow will be independently verified by using the criteria as a measure.
“Pollinators such as butterflies, bees and birds are integral to the food supply chain,’ said Inder Poonaji, head of environmental sustainability at Nestlé UK .
“By helping to restore natural habitats in this way we hope to see an increase in local biodiversity.
“Our long-term goal is to work with more organizations, businesses and other stakeholders across our supply chain to make this a national project.”
Concern over declining numbers prompted project
Poonaji points to disturbing recent statistics in Britain:
“Butterflies are vital for our ecosystem but they are facing particularly tough conditions. Their numbers indicate the environmental health of an area and by restoring natural habits we will see an increase in both fauna and flora thereby increasing the local biodiversity and helping local indigenous species.
“In May this year, the State of Nature report compiled by 25 wildlife organizations was launched suggesting 60 percent of animal and plant species studied have declined in the past 50 years. The small tortoiseshell butterfly has declined in abundance by 77 percent in the last 10 years, while the British butterfly population is continuing a marked downward trend. Beetles and wildflowers are also among the most vulnerable species.
“The Butterfly Conservation 2012 report revealed numbers of the insects fell by more than 20 percent between 2010 and 2011 adding that there was a long-term and on-going deterioration of suitable butterfly habitats across the countryside.”