VOLUNTEERS are being sought to help look for one of the North-East’s most elusive and threatened butterflies.

In partnership with Butterfly Conservation, Durham Wildlife Trust (DWT) will be running survey training courses in May and June to look for the Dingy Skipper - a small, inconspicuous, brown and grey butterfly that has declined nationally by 42 per cent in recent decades.

Mark Dinning, from the trust, said: “We would like people to join us the hunt for this sometimes difficult to find butterfly.

"Many of the areas where the Dingy Skipper was once found in the county have changed enormously since recorders last focused on this species.

“It is also often a species that is quite easily overlooked as it can blend in well with its sounding environment, which makes seeing this champion at the art of camouflage all the more satisfying. Our workshops will help surveyors to locate them."

The butterfly receives no legal protection in England and this has contributed to a number of important sites being lost in the North-East.

However, County Durham still holds some strongholds for the butterfly because its larval food-plant, bird’s-foot trefoil, occurs on many of the unimproved grassland and brownfield sites in the county.

The main threat is from development of the sites for agriculture, quarrying, industry and housing or neglect, all of which means that the butterfly has vanished from many areas.

A course will be held on Thursday (May 5) at DWT's Low Barns reserve near Witton-le-Wear and on Sunday, May 15, at Rainton Meadows, its headquarters near Houghton le Spring.

For more information and to book email mdinning@durhamwt.co.uk