Intensive game keeping, coppicing and butterflies: The story of Milovicky Wood, Czech Republic

While transfers of formerly coppiced or grazed woodlands into shady high forests cause severe declines of woodland butterflies across Europe, increasing numbers of wild ungulates contribute to maintaining stand openness. To disentangle the relative effects of management and ungulates, we studied butterfly assemblages in the Milovicky Wood, southeastern Czech Republic. After centuries of short-rotation coppicing, the wood was abandoned in the...