Horror on the Hill?

There may be more to this than I understand... fingers crossed.

Two weeks ago I discovered a large population of the rare and endangered butterfly, the High Brown Fritillary in a spectacular meadow between Itford Hill, Southease and Firle Beacon on the Southdowns way. Yesterday evening I returned to photograph them and the other wonderful insects again. but too my horror the whole meadow had been cut down while in full bloom and before the flowers had gone to seed. I'm hopping that perhaps this was a plan that I don't fully understand and perhaps somebody reading this can enlighten me?

You will see from the photo that the grassland to the left, on the north facing slope is sill intact but the Fritillaries were on the south facing bank and all there was to see was a Kestrel picking up dead and injured insects rather than it's usual prey, rodents. Fingers crossed the butterflies escaped and any eggs and/or caterpillars survived.