Glow worms are a rare sight in the UK but one young conservationist is trying to bring them back.
"The fascination of glow worms for me is that they are in effect magic," says ecologist Pete Cooper, as he tramples through thistles and nettles.
"I'm not holding the twinkling box of lights," he adds, referring to the eerie greenish-orange glow made by the female of the species; the stuff of fairy tales and folklore. At first he lost a lot of animals. He turned to citizen scientists for help, including a hobbyist whose bred 21 generations of glow worms over 14 years at his home in Germany.
This horror aside, not everyone's chuffed with the idea of reintroducing glow worms - and many other animals - into the wild.Alistair Driver, director of Rewilding Britain, sees this attitude as short-sighted. Over the phone from Broughton Sanctuary in North Yorkshire, where he's advising on a project to bring wildlife back into the landscape, he says there are already clear international guidelines set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
"I think it is very important we do these things well and with the best knowledge possible but you've also got to be bold and pragmatic," he says.
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