Britain’s only mountain butterfly is facing extinction. The mountain ringlet is, like its name suggests, an alpine butterfly, coloured purplish-brown with splashes of orange “eyes”. But the butterfly is being driven farther up mountains to find cooler conditions because it is too warm farther below.

Our last remnants of plant life from the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago, are also disappearing. Already, four species of lichens in the Scottish mountains are extinct. The beautiful Snowdon lily has only a precarious hold on the cold northern slopes of Snowdonia. When the plant was first spotted around 1696 it was already rare. But gradually the climate has grown warmer, the mountain snowfields have rapidly shrunk and now only five small patches of the plant survive.

The Snowdon lily could be joined by the tufted saxifrage, which survives on only one outcrop of rocks in Snowdonia, although it still grows in the Scottish mountains. The mountain avens also clings on to mountains in the Highlands, Snowdonia and the Lake District.

Climate change is expected to push the range of plants and wildlife north by about 50 to 80km (30 to 50 miles) a decade. This means that more southern species will appear in Scotland, but our northern and mountain species will be squeezed into ever smaller areas until they have nowhere else to go.