Nature lovers urged to join hunt for rare miniscule moth in Scottish mountains
The Highland nymph, or Alpine coffee moth, is on the edge of extinction due to loss of mountain willow habitat, experts have said.
People are being urged to join the search for one of Scotland’s smallest species – a moth just a few millimetres long – to help save it from UK extinction.
The tiny Highland nymph, which is also nicknamed the Alpine coffee moth because of its cappuccino colours and its habitat in the mountains, is on the edge of extinction in Britain in the face of dwindling habitat.
The species, which is found in the Alps and Scandinavia and was only recorded in the UK for the first time in 1983, lives on two species of mountain willows, where its caterpillars eat the inside of leaves.
While ecologists had logged the species in suitable habitat the 1990s, it had not been seen in Scotland for 20 years until a team from wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation rediscovered it in 2024 in a colony that had just 30 to 40 individuals.
The charity is appealing for volunteers to join a Scotland-wide search for more colonies.
And with concerns the moth is on the edge of extinction in the UK because of grazing animals eating away at their habitat, experts are calling for action to manage deer and sheep populations to prevent further loss of willows and allow woodlands to regenerate.
The moth has only ever been found at 10 locations in three glens in the Cairngorms National Park: Glen Callater, Glen Clova and Glen Doll, and when Butterfly Conservation started looking for the species in March 2022, the willows the moths lived on had disappeared from some of the old sites.
Butterfly Conservation ecologist Patrick Cook said: “When we first started looking for this moth a few years ago it wasn’t really part of our work, it was just because a group of us really wanted to see one but, in some sites where the species was previously found, there was no longer suitable habitat – it then became a real mission to find the moth.”
The team went “up in the hills in all conditions”, in what he described as the most challenging survey work Butterfly Conservation had done, eventually finding a small population in Corrie Sharroch, in NatureScot’s Corrie Fee national nature reserve in April last year.
Butterfly Conservation is working on initiatives to help the moth, including work with landowners to look at small-scale planting of willows near the existing site.
The charity and other organisations are hoping to co-ordinate a widespread search across mountainous areas of Scotland to find any evidence of other colonies of the Highland nymph, including running an online training session in the spring to tell people what to look out for.
Mr Cook said: “Finding any more colonies could be extremely difficult but, given the remote locations of the moth, it is an exciting possibility.
“Even if we do, the species is still facing serious threats in Scotland – but it could buy us some valuable extra time to save this fantastic moth from extinction in the UK.”
Sarah Watts, PhD researcher at the University of Stirling and chair of the Mountain Woodland Action Group, said she was “absolutely delighted” the moth had been rediscovered but its current status showed how important mountain willow species were for supporting rare upland wildlife.
“We must accelerate mountain woodland restoration and revive Scotland’s altitudinal treeline before it’s too late to save the Alpine coffee moth and other threatened species.
“This action urgently requires management for low-density, large herbivore populations to remove the pressure of overgrazing at a landscape-scale and enable the regeneration of trees and shrubs across our mountains,” she urged.
