This is the Guardian.

This audio long read contains language you may find offensive.

The Guardian Archive Long read. I'm Patrick Barkham, I'm the Guardian's natural history writer and I wrote the long read how Maverick Re Wilders are trying to turn back the tide of extinction back in 2020.

I've always loved butterflies there are a lifelong passion for me and through my interest in butterflies I became

friends with a very interesting bloke who gradually over time revealed to me that

he was secretly releasing butterflies into the British countryside and actually he and his son

had released a number of rare species in a fairly nondescript southern English town that I can't even mention and this is the

combination of secrecy and the whiff of illegality but also this father and son

were driven very much by strong principles of putting nature back, restoring wildlife in one of the most nature depleted

countries in the world. That led me to think this is a brilliant subject to cover in more detail. They also told me about a guy called Martin White who was

like the dawn of butterfly breeders. I thought he would never speak to me but because I knew these butterfly people who knew him

I persuaded them to approach him and see if I could at least have a conversation with him and

much to my delight he agreed and Martin White forms the basis of this long read.

It's a kind of deep dive into this fascinating man who has lived beyond the

mainstream of British life and British conservation for most of his life.

And then of course I heard about other people doing it and it seemed to be a bit of a trend, this impatience with mainstream conservation, sort of nature

restoration happening too slowly and therefore individuals were taking it into their own hands.

It's four years on from when I wrote the story and what's interesting

really is how little has changed. Nature in Britain is still in crisis and still in

decline and meanwhile there are more people young as well as old who are

secretly sometimes illegally releasing species into Britain there's now pine Martins established in the new forest in Hampshire that were

released there by someone. And last summer there was a case of a butterfly called the

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