'Fascinating': after a three-year search, the beetle Wales lost for 60 years is breeding again

For three years, surveyors combed the flower-rich grassland of the Castlemartin Range in Pembrokeshire, hunting for one of Britain's rarest insects. Last year they found only dead adults, and feared the short-necked oil beetle — missing from Wales for 60 years — was gone for good. This year they found larvae: living proof the beetle is breeding in Wales again. The beetle's life hangs on solitary bees, thick vegetation and dense wildflowers, so only a handful of UK sites can support it. Anne Hobbs of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust called the discovery “very exciting” — and Natural Resources Wales, whose flagship species recovery programme runs the site, says the number and spread of the larvae back her up.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program