Butterfly Conservation Europe

In order to conserve butterflies and target scarce resources, it is vital to have data on species distribution and trends, as well as the location of important sites. You can enter your butterfly and moths observations via BCE's online recording scheme: http://www.butterfly-recording.eu

At present the following sources of data are available at pan-European level:

• The updated taxonomy of European Butterflies, made for the Red List of 2010. In the zip file you find a pdf and an excel file.
• The Red List (2010) presents the conservation status of 483 European butterflies (excluding Asian Turkey).
• The European Butterfly Indicator for Grassland species: 1990-2009. This indicator is based on data from fourteen national Butterfly Monitoring Schemes. The European Grassland Butterfly Indicator shows the population trend of butterflies which are characteristic of grasslands. Since 1990 the European Grassland Butterfly Indicator shows a strong negative trend and has declined by almost 70%. The pdf can be downloaded here.
• Red Data Book. The Red Data Book (1999) presents the first comprehensive review of the status of butterflies across Europe and a new Red List for the 576 resident species (this list includes the Asian part of Turkey). The report was compiled from information from a network of over 50 compilers from almost every country. The analysis showed that a total of 71 species are threatened (12% of the total), mainly because of rapidly changing land-use and the intensification of agriculture and forestry. Download a pdf of the complete report here (3 MB).
  
  Coenonympha hero: extinct in many countries in Western Europe and considered threatened in the Red Data Book. Photo: Chris van Swaay.
  
  

• Prime Butterfly Areas in Europe (2003). A follow up project was conducted in 2002–3 to identify Prime Butterfly Areas (PBAs) in Europe where conservation should be targeted as a priority. Due to constraints of time and resources, this concentrated on identifying the most important (prime) areas for 34 target species, using a network of national compilers. The book gives details of 431 areas covering 1.8% of the land surface of Europe, and shows that target butterflies are declining in one quarter of PBAs, indicating that breeding habitats are continuing to deteriorate even though many are protected by national designation. Download a pdf of the Executive summary here (800 KB), a recent paper (2006) in the Journal of Insect Conservation here; or order the book. The book can be ordered by sending an email to info@vlinderstichting.nl.

• Biotope use and trends of European butterflies (2006). This paper presents an overview of trends within different biotopes across Europe. Next to that an overview of the biotope use of 436 European species is presented. Download a pdf here (4MB). Beware: there is a printing error in Appendix 1. Please download a correct version here.   

• The European Butterfly Climate Change Indicator. Climate change is one of the major threats to butterflies in Europe. This report studies the possibilities to use butterflies as indicators for climate change and shows that there is an excellent method to do so. Butterfly communities react to climate change by changing their composition, where southern species become more abundant and northern species decline.    

Species Action Plans are the translation of distribution, trend and research for the direct conservation of butterflies. Species Action Plans can be found here.