Britain’s largest and most ferocious beetle the Stag beetle uses its antlers only to fight off male competitors it is incapable of feeding and lives in its adult state only long enough to breed.

Why should we be concerned for it? Well, apart from needing to maintain ecosystems for the benefit of all creatures the Beetle like others spends most of its life eating already rotten wood, helping to return the wood to become soil. They can fly up to 500m from where they emerged as an adult so with the loss of woodland and particularly old woodland their breeding sites are becoming rare as distance between locations of rotting wood increase. We can help provide staging points by making provision for them and other insects, as well as amphibians, etc by making wood piles in our gardens and public sites. Details and more explanation are in the download.

Roger Spiller

How to build a log pyramid for stag beetle – article from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species