ARCHIVE: Key Facts about: Wildlife
Populations of butterflies: 1976-2007
England
The overall population of butterflies has fluctuated over the last thirtyone years, with peaks at six to eight year intervals, and a progressive decline over a 31 year period.
The 25'specialist' species have fared worse than the 24 'generalist' species. The measure for specialist species shows a sharp decline from 1976 to 1979, with approximate stability thereafter. Statistical analysis of changes in the underlying smoothed trend shows that the specialist species measure declined significantly over the long-term between 1976-1979 and 2007, with an overall reduction of 54% since the baseline. By contrast, there was no statistically significant change over the short-term from 2000-2007.
Butterflies are considered good biodiversity indicators because they respond rapidly to changes in environment and management, occur in a wide range of habitats, and are representative of many other insects, which collectively account for more than 50 per cent of terrestrial UK wildlife species. Butterflies play a complementary role to birds as an indicator, because they use the landscape at a far finer scale.
The indicator includes the 49 out of 52 native resident English butterfly species for which sufficient monitoring data are available. The indicator includes a breakdown for 25 specialist (low mobility species restricted to semi-natural habitats) and 24 generalist (mobile species that occur in a wide range of habitats in the wider countryside) species, from data collected at approximately 1,150 sites.
In Detail:
Further Information:
- Source:
- Butterfly Conservation, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Wallingford) (CEH)
- Key Facts:
- Populations of moths
Data Tables:
Download Chart Data: Microsoft Excel Population of butterflies
- Internet Links:
- Butterfly Conservation
- UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS)
- Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
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Page last modified: 25 November 2009
Page published: 27 October 2006