A task force is to be set up in the next few weeks to co-ordinate efforts to save Britain's most threatened plants and animals from extinction, the Department of the Environment has disclosed.
The "biodiversity action plan steering group", drawing on the expertise of official wildlife agencies and bodies such as the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, will next year publish long-term conservation plans for a critical list of species and habitats.
Dormice, pine martens, several kinds of cricket and spider, rare types of primrose and orchid and a handful of birds, bats, butterflies and snakes are among the animals to get priority treatment.
Rescue will come too late for some. Over the past 15 years alone nine plants and animals have disappeared from Britain.
Margaret Palmer, head of species conservation at the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which advises the Government, said: "One species of dragonfly was not seen for more than ten years and then turned up again. It might have been missed or could have come back in from the Continent."
Each loss matters. Britain is home to only 1,400 of the world's 250,000 species of flowering plants, 210 of its 9,881 breeding birds, 48 of its 4,327 terrestrial mammals and 38 of its 8,500 freshwater fish.
The following extinctions are known or thought to have occurred since 1979:
Large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion): disappeared from the last known site in Devon in 1979. Scientists have re-established it at six sites using Swedish imports.
Viper's bugloss moth (Hadena irregularis): not seen since 1981. Until then a few colonies existed in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Ivell's sea anemone (Edwardsia ivelli): last specimen collected in December, 1983, from a lagoon in Sussex.
Stinking hawk's beard (Crepis foetida): coastal thistle of the dandelion family. Last seen at Dungeness in Kent around 1983. Attempts to restore plant in the wild using seeds stored at Kew.
Lagoon sandworm (Armandia cirrhosa): last seen in 1985 at a lagoon in Hampshire, which was then estimated to contain five million of the worms.
Meadow wood ant (Formica pratensis): rare since the mid-1970s. Not seen at last known site since 1988.
Red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio): last breeding pair seen in Thetford Forest, Norfolk, in 1991. Probably extinct.
Essex emerald moth (Thetidia smaragdaria): last sighted in 1991 on a saltmarsh in Kent. Presumed extinct.
Greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis): not seen since 1991. If extinct, the first mammal to disappear from Britain since the wolf in the mid-18th century.
Among the most threatened animals and plants are the dormouse, pine marten, red squirrel, greater horseshoe bat, otter, the Scots primrose, the lady's slipper orchid and strapwort. Birds include bitterns, corncrakes, and stone curlews. Other creatures under threat include the field cricket, the wart-biter cricket, the fen raft spider, the marsh fritillary butterfly and the smooth snake.
