Butterfly collector is spared jail over killing Large Blue

A COLLECTOR who captured and killed specimens of Britain’s rarest butterfly, the Large Blue, has been spared jail.

Philip Cullen, 57, was given a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work for capturing the globally endangered butterflies at two protected sites.

He was also given a five-year criminal behaviour order banning him from three nature reserves popular with the Large Blue (Maculinea arion).

Bristol Magistrates’ Court heard that Cullen scrambled over locked gates and was seen swiping a child’s net at a Large Blue before leaving the Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire with a plastic bag containing glass jars.

The following day, volunteers at the Collard Hill site in Somerset challenged Cullen after seeing him with the small net.

Police later raided his home in Bristol and found a large number of dead and mounted butterflies, including Large Blues. Prosecutor Ian Jackson told the court: “These charges are not brought on the grounds of cruelty, they are brought on the grounds of endangering a species.”

Following a trial last month, magistrates convicted Cullen of six charges against him, relating to him killing, capturing and possessing the Large Blue butterflies.

Cullen, of The Grove, Warmley, Bristol, had previously admitted two other charges of possessing other protected species of butterfly.

Michael Hartnell, defending, said: “He accepts the enormity of what he has done. He only had one from each site but he accepts that if everybody did that they would die out. He is extremely remorseful. His interest in the countryside and wildlife is one he has had for a long, long time.”

Large Blues became extinct in about 1979 and were reintroduced, including to Collard Hill and Daneway Banks, in the 1980s.