Concert raises over £400 to help bring back locally extinct butterfly to the St Davids Peninsula

Left to right: Dr Sarah Beynon, Emma Johnson and Suzanne Hay

A collaboration between world-renowned clarinettist Emma Johnson, The Bug Farm in St Davids and St Davids Cathedral Music Festival has raised over £400 to help bring back a locally-extinct butterfly to the St Davids Peninsula.

In a pre-concert talk at Twr-y-Felin Hotel, Dr Sarah Beynon, from The Bug Farm, explained the nature recovery project, which aims to bring back the marsh fritillary butterfly to the St Davids Peninsula. “We need to plant more plug plants of the butterfly’s foodplant, the Devil’s-bit scabious, in perfect locations that we have identified with surveys and thermal drone mapping. This will ensure that there is sufficient foodplant in the right places to feed the caterpillars when we hopefully release them” said Sarah. While this day is some way off, with a licence required to collect caterpillars from another local population, Sarah is confident that the butterfly will once again be flying across the Peninsula due to collaborative efforts to improve habitat in the area. Sarah’s talk was followed by an interview with Emma Johnson, winner of the 1984 BBC Young Musician of the Year, about her career and her new composition ‘Tree of Life’, inspired by a wish to say something about the climate emergency.

Marsh fritillary butterfly, by Iain H Leach

Emma Johnson, with her ‘Orchestra for the Environment’, delivered an awe-inspiring programme of music celebrating the beauty of our natural world. They included classics in the repertoire such as Mozart’s Ein Kleine Nachtmusik, and Paul Reade’s ‘Suite from the Victorian Kitchen Garden’ complimented by Emma’s own extremely moving and thought-provoking composition.

The post-concert collection raised over £400, which means another 400 Devil’s-bit scabious plug plants will be grown by Pembrokeshire’s own ‘The Wildflower Flower Nursery’ and planted across the St Davids Peninsula by The Bug Farm team. Festival Artistic Director Simon Pearce said: “’Nature and music have always gone hand in hand and I was thrilled to be able to combine a local and global project through the love of music. I wish Dr Sarah every success in her venture and I hope the money raised went some way to addressing this recovery”. For more information on the wider project, visit www.thebugfarm.co.uk or see it in action at The Bug Farm.

More photographs from the talk by Dr Sarah Beynon

Devil’s-bit scabious plug plant

Talk by Dr Sarah Beynon at Twr y Felin Hotel

Talk by Dr Sarah Beynon at Twr y Felin Hotel