2025 is the 50th survey season for the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme!
The UKBMS is one of the longest running invertebrate monitoring schemes in the world, having started in 1976. It is now entering its 50th survey season when we will celebrate the achievements of the scheme and acknowledge the contribution of the many thousands of volunteers that have been involved over the last five decades.
Help us celebrate the 50th anniversary!
Local events
To celebrate this milestone year we plan to have small, local events to connect volunteers in each region.
Could you help to arrange a get together for the volunteers in your area? We have lots of resources available to help you plan and promote an event. This is a great opportunity to meet other Transect Surveyors in your area, to show off your transect, to get the team that survey your transect together or to explore another transect. Get in touch with us at transect@butterfly-conservation.org to find out more.
To find events in your local area, visit the events page on Butterfly Conservation's website, or your local Butterfly Conservation branch. UKBMS volunteers that are registered on the Assemble platform will also find them listed on there under Events.
50th Anniversary Conference
We are planning a celebratory conference at the end of the 2025 season. There's going to be some great talks about the achievements of the scheme as well as some recent butterfly research and discoveries. The conference will be held in Nottingham on Saturday October 11th.
Follow our social media
Follow #UKBMS50 to keep up to date with plans and events for the 50th anniversary as they evolve.
Bluesky - @ukbms.bsky.social and X - @UKBMSLive
Facts and Figures
- 715,000 surveys have been completed
- Volunteer Surveyors have walked a total of 950,000 miles (over 1.5 million km)
- 7000+ sites have been surveyed
- Over 41 million butterflies have been recorded
Meadow Brown is the most recorded species accounting for 28% of records and over 11 million records
A brief history of the UKBMS
The UKBMS began in 1976 with the first official transect being walked at Potton Wood NNR in Bedfordshire by Iain Woiwod on April 10th. In that first year, 39 sites were monitored by transect across England and Wales. The scheme now monitors over 3000 sites annually and more than 7000 sites have been monitored in all.
The method had been devised and tested over the preceding years at the Institute for Terrestrial Ecology (now UKCEH) by Ernie Pollard and his team. The method of transect walks to monitor butterflies is often still referred to as 'Pollard walks'. Ernie Pollard is shown below walking the butterfly transect at Bevill's Wood.
Whilst transects form the backbone of the UKBMS, those data are supplemented by additional methods, including timed counts for priority species and, since 2009, data from the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS). This latter scheme is based on the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) protocol developed by the BTO.
