Forester: The search for Northern Ireland’s mysterious moth

The exact location of the Forester Moth breeding site in the park is being kept secret to help protect the species.

For the past two years Butterfly Conservation has been maintaining the habitat at that site and carefully monitoring the population.

Rose Cremin is Butterfly Conservation’s manager for Northern Ireland.

“I absolutely love the Forester: it has beautiful, metallic green wings that shimmer like opal and change colour so it sometimes looks blue and sometimes yellow,” she said.

“We want to protect it for its own sake, but actually if we can provide more of the habitat it needs, full of wildflowers like orchids and Ragged Robin, this will be great for other rare moths and butterflies.”

The charity believes the Forester might still have other unknown populations across Northern Ireland that could now be protected.