ONE of Britain’s rarest spiders has crawled back from the brink of extinction through a programme of captive breeding and re- introduction, and preserving its heathland habitat in Dorset.

The UK ladybird spider, named because of the bright red and black markings on the male during the mating season, had seen numbers shrink to a few dozen individuals on a single site in the county.

The ladybird spider was originally thought to have been extinct in this country since 1906 but it was rediscovered on Dorset heathland in 1979.

A ‘web count’ on the patch in 1994 revealed there were just 56 ladybird spiders left.

But conservation efforts, including habitat management of heathland, scrub clearance and captive breeding and introductions have increased numbers to around 1,000 spiders in the latest web count.

The ladybird spider is fussy and likes patchy, well-drained, south-facing lowland heath – Thomas Hardy’s ‘Egdon Heath’, for example, which was based on Studland Heath.

When that and much of the remaining heathland disappeared naturalists thought that was the end of the ladybird spider.

But careful management of the site, which was kept secret, allowed the population to flourish and the spiders were relocated to carefully chosen sites – including Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Tadnoll and Winfrith nature reserve – that are monitored by foresters such as Laurence Degoul.

The small spider spends most of its life underground, living a solitary existence in a silk-lined burrow with a web over the entrance.

The spiders attack a range of large beetles, bees and wasps and drag them underground, but can also leave the burrow and chase after prey. Natural England carried out conservation efforts with the Ministry of Def-ence, Herpetological Conser-vation Trust, the Forestry Commission, Dudley Zoo and members from the British Arachnological Soc-iety under the agency's species recovery programme.

Conservation has focused on captive breeding and relocation of small numbers of ladybird spiders to suitable heathland areas in Dorset, which are managed to preserve the habitat.

Dr Helen Phillips, chief executive of Natural Eng-land, said: “Heathland habitats have become increasingly fragmented and de-graded in recent decades, placing the fate of many of our species in the balance.

“There is nothing inevit-able about this and no reason why we should simply accept biodiversity loss as an unfortunate price of 21st century life.”