The Dutch panda, the rare large fire butterfly is sometimes called

In search, in the Weerribben, Overijssel, for the masterpiece of the nature museum called the Netherlands: the large fire butterfly. Still pretty hard to find, I thought. But Susan Oosterlaar, volunteer, guide, inventor and writer of the book The big fire butterfly, sails and walks purposefully to the places where they can be found. Within five minutes we are standing among the reeds, somewhere in the low moor area, when he is already flying there, a male, a flashing light, orange-red from above, light blue from below. And yes, he is beautiful, recently flown out and completely cool.

Perhaps a few hundred specimens still exist, really only here and in the nearby Rottige Meente nature reserve, despite decades of efforts to garden the species towards expansion. A little later we see another male, and then two more, it is impossible. They have all taken over territory near the plants they get their nectar from: big loosestrife, swamp scroll clover, liverwort. And now we have to wait for the females to crawl out of their pupae, which we see on the leaves of the aquatic sorrel, their host plant. Once out of the pupa, the females look for a suitable male.

The Dutch panda, that is how the large fire butterfly is also called. The subspecies batava only occurs in the Netherlands. This makes it one of the three endemic species in the Netherlands, and by far the most appealing.

A swamp butterfly, a super specialist too. It occurs naturally along lowland rivers that run through swamps. Systems with strong changes in water level. The large fire butterfly colonized our country and England from the east, and was larger and more colorful than the eastern variety. England and the Netherlands were still connected by a large swamp area, but that was swallowed by the sea around 7000 years ago. The English population of the large fire butterfly died out around 1850, due to further draining of the swamps.

In the Netherlands, the butterfly must have been alive all this time, but it was only discovered in 1915. The peat cultivation, the excavation of peat, in combination with reed cultivation, turned out to provide ideal conditions. The intermediate stage of land reclamation of wetlands was man-made.

And now we are sailing through the area where peat extraction has long since stopped. It would be ideal if flowing rivers ran through the area again, as researcher Frits Bink noted decades ago. Then the banks regularly flood, the vegetation remains short and the mooring is inhibited. In summer, the vegetation is long enough to provide shelter and warmth to the large fire butterfly. However, larger differences in water level encounter objections in recreational land. So ideal conditions are now being simulated, by ‘chamfering’ edges, by stimulating nectar plants and nurturing and sometimes moving the water sorrel host. Managed by reed cutters, who prevent the landing. And by digging new waterways and by ‘constructing’ marshland.

That yields quite something, namely a dragonfly and butterfly paradise. A beautiful room in the museum. Controlled cultural nature, in which it is pleasant to chug. We do that too, chug, along the banks where purple herons forage, along the crabshark in the water, surrounded by dragonflies that skim over the water. ‘Oh dear, this area should not have been mowed yet’, says Susan Oosterlaar. It remains human work, management. Then we see what we were still looking for: two flying females. ‘Beautiful, beautiful!’ Susan Oosterlaar calls out. And I call it with her. We have completed the masterpiece of the museum.