An endangered and even thought-to-be-extinct animal species was found on the roasting slope of Säkylänharju, which has been seen in Finland once and only once in 1964.
Metsähallitus The employees of the Nature Services in Säkylä made a surprising discovery last week, when they were renovating the overgrown Säkylänharju roasting slope.
An endangered and even thought-to-be-extinct animal species was found in Paahderinte, which has been seen in Finland once and only once before, that time also on Säkylänharju.
A super-rare find is the ryegrass beetle (Chrysolina cerealis), which before this has only been observed in Finland in 1964. The species is not known at all from Sweden and Norway, and it has disappeared from Denmark.
“It was not known whether the species still lives in Finland, and in the 2019 threat assessment it received an exceptional classification, ‘endangered, possibly lost’. Now it turned out that the species still lives on Säkylänharju, which is a really great thing, because it is the only known occurrence of the species in the Nordic countries”, says the special expert of nature conservation Sampsa Malmberg Metsähallitus’ bulletin.
This super rare sedge beetle was found on Säkylänharju last week.
The driftwood beetle was found in the renovation works of the ridge slope where drift grass was growing. The individual, which had dug deep underground, came to the fore with the soil material stuck to the roots of the sparrow vegetation removed from the slope.
“I told my colleague Sampsa Malmberg a moment ago that the species could be found precisely in this way, and that’s how it was found,” says the nature conservation expert who found the individual in question Seppo Karjalainen.
The weed beetle is a shiny and convex leaf beetle with variable coloration and can appear in all the colors of the rainbow. The English name of the species is aptly “rainbow leaf beetle”.
The coverts of the beetle found now have alternating blue and green longitudinal stripes. The Finnish name of the weed beetle emphasizes the food plant it requires, weed, which is the only food plant for dozens of other endangered insect species. On Säkylänharju, rush grass grows on open roasting slopes.
Säkylänharju is a unique ridge area in Finland, because an exceptionally large number of endangered insect and plant species live on its wide open slopes. Some of them are even completely unique to the area, just like the weed beetle that has just been found.
Other such species that are unique to the area are, for example, the ridge-wing, the rose-winged cricket, and the ruffed grouse, which are extremely endangered. All these species are dependent on the open roasting slopes of the ridge, which are scarce elsewhere in Finland.
A gray heron’s wing photographed on Säkylänharju in 2002.
Thanks to the training activities of the Defense Forces, the Säkylänharju area has remained open and of high quality for a long time, which added that the Metsähallitus has taken care of maintaining the roasting habitats in the area if necessary.
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