Who has heard of the Chequered Skipper? Some may know it as a picturesque, thatched pub in the small village of Ashton, near Oundle in Northamptonshire.

The pub and adjacent green was famously the home of the World Championships for 45 years, until the contest moved to another pub a few miles away. (I’ve been to the Chequered Skipper a few times myself!)

Nature-minded readers will know the Chequered Skipper as a butterfly. It once thrived in Northamptonshire but became extinct in England over 40 years ago; its population in Britain became confined to north-west Scotland.

Good news for the Chequered Skipper was revealed recently: the butterfly has been reintroduced to Rockingham Forest in Northamptonshire – woodlands where it once lived. Butterfly Conservation said the project started in 2018.

Butterfly Conservation Chequered Skipper project Manager Susannah O’Riordan said: “The results from this project are very exciting: we've never carried out a project exactly like this before and it was a real experiment, but it's been a success. We have brought this wonderful butterfly back to England.”

Until the 1950s, the Chequered Skipper was locally common in damp woods and fens in the East Midlands, including Rockingham Forest.

Its decline was due to landowners changing the way they managed woodlands – planting conifer trees which created denser, darker areas, and stopping traditional coppice management which meant open spaces were no longer maintained.

The Chequered Skipper was extinct in England by 1976, with small numbers surviving in Scotland. The species is still common in parts of Europe and Asia, but Butterfly Conservation says there are worrying declines in several countries.

The charity started looking at the possibility of reintroduction in 2010 and spent eight years assessing the feasibility. The attraction of Rockingham Forest for the reintroduction was that landowners, including Forestry England and Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, worked with Butterfly Conservation to change how they managed the woodlands.

The partners started managing 23 hectares of vegetation to create habitats into which the Chequered Skipper could expand and thrive.

Forestry England also improved the woodland habitat by widening the “rides” through the forest – open corridors between the trees – and creating other open, sunny habitats which benefit the butterflies.

The scientists even ran computer simulations to model what effect climate change could have on Rockingham Forest by 2070, and concluded that rising temperatures and increased rainfall could favour the species.

Finally, the team found a healthy population of the butterflies in an area of Belgium that was similar to Rockingham Forest and, in 2018, embarked on their first collection. In total Butterfly Conservation transported and released 128 butterflies (101 females and 27 males) into Rockingham Forest.

The population has been monitored using the unique patterns on Chequered Skipper wings. Volunteers took photographs of the Chequered Skippers they found, then compared the unique wing markings in the pictures to work out the number of individuals seen.

The population increased each year up to 2022, with a slight retreat in 2023. Numbers were stable last year, but with some sightings in new areas, showing the population is expanding its range.

This good news has been revealed after the charity declared a UK Butterfly Emergency last September.

Butterfly Conservation says this successful reintroduction shows one of the ways humans can start to undo years of damage to the natural environment.