A nest containing up to 5,000 of England’s rarest ant species has been stolen from a nature reserve, possibly in a bid to locate them in a more ‘wild’ environment.
Devon Wildlife Trust (DWT) said the colony of narrow-headed ants had been dug up and taken from Chudleigh Knighton Heath nature reserve in South Devon, which is the last place in England where the species still exists.
A single nest can hold a colony of between 1,000 and 5,000 ants, along with one or more breeding queens, which can live for up to 25 years.
DWT said the theft was discovered by researchers carrying out regular checks who found a hole where a nest had been and ‘clear signs of digging with a spade’.
Narrow-headed ants, which are named after their distinctive cranial features, were once widespread across southern England in heathlands. However, their numbers have declined over the last 100 years due to habitat loss from agriculture and construction.
Now they are classified as a section 41 species, nationally rare, and near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of species.
‘This is the last population of narrow-headed ants in England, and losing even one colony sets back years of careful work by our staff, volunteers and partners’
Julia Balfour, Devon Wildlife Trust
Stephen Hussey, from DWT, said that whoever had stolen the nest knew what they were looking for and would have needed prior knowledge of ant colonies to be able to locate the nest and explained rewilding as a potential motive.
‘We keep a close eye on them, so we know exactly where the nests are, but it’s not obvious to someone who doesn’t know about ants,’ he said.
‘It’s still a reckless act because you need a degree of expertise to move ants and prepare new homes for them. We have ambitions to move some of the nests to new sites, but that will take a great deal of conservation effort, so relocating one nest to a new site isn’t likely to be very successful.’
Julia Balfour, the species recovery officer for narrow-headed ants at DWT, added: ‘Narrow-headed ant colonies develop slowly, and each mature nest, with its long-lived queens, represents many years of growth that cannot quickly be replaced.
‘This is a crime every bit as serious as illegal raids on wild bird eggs. It shows the pressures that our nature and wild places are under. This is the last population of narrow-headed ants in England, and losing even one colony sets back years of careful work by our staff, volunteers and partners.’
The ant nest theft comes at a time when conservation effort has recently begun which specifically targets improvements to secure the future of narrow headed ants locally. A collaboration between Devon Wildlife Trust and Buglife began in the summer after support was received from the UK Government as part of the ‘Wild Again: Restoring England’s Wildlife’ initiative.
PC Lucy Wyatt, of the Devon and Cornwall Police rural affairs team, said: ‘Sites of special scientific interest are legally protected and it is a criminal offence for any person to intentionally or recklessly damage, destroy, or disturb the protected area.’
