Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey

Nationwide survey goes ahead in 2009

There is growing acknowledgement of the importance of biodiversity in the wider countryside. Butterfly populations are an excellent way to monitor the health of an environment.

UK butterfly monitoring currently focuses on nature reserves and butterfly-rich places. This has lead to a lack of monitoring in vast areas of the wider countryside. These areas include farmland, plantation woodland, uplands and urban green spaces

The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, run by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecologyand Hydrology, has developed a new Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS) method to gauge the changing abundance of widespread species in the general countryside.

70% of the UK’s land is in agricultural use. It is essential that butterflies in these areas are monitored to gauge the health our countryside.

What's involved?

The new method involves making a minimum of two visits to a randomly selected square near between May and August to count butterflies along two 1km survey lines running roughly north-south through the square. The survey will be co-ordinated centrally by Butterfly Conservation but with the help of a WCBS Champion in each Branch. We are aiming for 20 squares per Branch.

Visit the UKBMS website for more details and copies of instructions and recording forms.

Contact

For more information or to take part in 2009 email Dr Katie Cruickshanks, WCBS Co-ordinator.

Funders

The project is funded by a Defra-led consortium of government agencies and runs parallel to UKBMS transect monitoring, and to the Butterflies for the New Millennium distribution records project.