New Forest cicada Cicadetta montana may return thanks to Species Recovery Trust, Paultons Park and Idrija Geopark in Slovenia

THE native New Forest cicada, which hasn’t been recorded in Britain since the 1990s, may be set for a return to the national park.

Cicadetta montana were once found across the Forest, but despite a lengthy hunt for the insect – which involved a smartphone app able to detect its near-silent call – none were found.

Now a small team of passionate experts, including keepers at Paultons Park’s zoo, are planning to start a new population in the Forest using cicadas of the same species – brought from Slovenia.

But not only is the project led by the Species Recovery Trust (SRT) a first, it could be 2030 at the earliest before they know if it’s a success, with any cicada nymphs hatching this year spending the next six to eight years underground feeding on plant roots.

Lead project officer Charlotte Carne said: “This whole project is a really exciting experiment; the adult cicadas are going to be extremely hard to spot, and although they do sing, it’s pretty much impossible to hear the song if you’re over 30 so we have to use bat detectors.”

The SRT has searched the New Forest for a decade without a single sighting. It has assessed the habitat the species needs and worked with Forestry England to put this in place.

Natural England has given the trust £28,000 as part of its species recovery programme, and it is also being supported by the Valentine Charitable Trust.

SRT founder Dominic Price and conservation officer Holly Stanworth have flown to Slovenia where the exact subspecies which used to be found in the New Forest lives in the Idrija Geopark.

The team hope to catch just five of each sex for couriers to deliver to Charlotte to take to Paultons Park. There, the zoo team has filled plant pots with hazel tree saplings, hawthorn, raspberry canes and purple moor grass covered with netting into which the cicada pairs will be carefully released.

The females should each lay several hundred eggs in the twigs before they die – their historic contribution to ecology accomplished. The eggs should hatch in November when the tiny white nymphs will fall to the soil and burrow down to begin six to eight years sucking the root sap.

Then in January Charlotte will take a selection of nymph pots to three secret woodland glades in the Forest and plant them out while Paultons Park will keep other pots as a back-up.

If the experiment is successful, in May or June 2030, a keeper at Paultons Park should spot little brown larva climbing plant stems to shed their nymphal skin and emerge as glistening black-and-orange adults.

Charlotte explained: “The New Forest cicada doesn’t have a super-important ecological role, but I think it has a real intrinsic value as the only cicada species native to the UK.

“I want my children to be able to walk through the Forest in 10 or 20 years and hear them, to really experience the sounds of the New Forest.”