Butterfly conservation in Europe is mainly focused on well-defined grassland habitat patches. Such an
approach ignores the impact of the surrounding landscape, which may contain complementary resources
and facilitate dispersal. Here, we investigated butterfly species richness and abundance in a habitat
normally regarded as unsuitable matrix: production forestry clear-cuts. Butterflies were recorded in 48
clear-cuts in southern Sweden differing with regards to the time since clear-cutting and land-use history
(meadow or forest based on historical maps from the 1870 s). All clear-cuts had been managed as production
forests for at least 80 e 120 years. A total of 39 species were found in clear-cuts of both land-use
histories, but clear-cuts with a history as meadow had on average 34% higher species richness and 19%
higher abundance than did clear-cuts with a history as forest. No effect of the time since clear-cutting
was found, irrespective of land-use history, which was likely due to the narrow timespan sampled (