European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme - eBMS
Become a volunteer counting butterflies!!
Help us counting butterflies, it will increase our knowledge of butterflies and we could protect them better. There are already thousands of volunteers throughout Europe helping in butterfly conservation.
If you would like to join eBMS and collaborate in the Butterfly Monitoring Scheme you just need to register. Follow this link to the My Data section and you will find a Quick Guide for setting up butterfly monitoring.
- Join one of the biggest citizen science networks
- Monitoring butterflies in your area, you will contribute to science
Watch explicative videos on how to use the eBMS website on the BCE Youtube Channel or check the pdf of the eBMS Guidelines with all the explanations
European butterfly records: see all the records submitted to eBMS from many different places around Europe, go to eBMS data -> Explore online data
ButterflyCount app: count butterflies easily with your phone, while doing a transect or 15-minute counts. Download the app and start discovering the species in your area!
This is the home page of the European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (eBMS). As a joint initiative of Butterfly Conservation Europe and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, this website is a home for promoting butterfly monitoring schemes across Europe and consists of the following activities:
- A collation of national Butterfly Monitoring Scheme datasets within Europe - the eBMS partnership
- A data system for establishing butterfly monitoring sites in regions currently lacking a national scheme. Click here to access the list of partners.
- The home for projects on Butterfly Monitoring
- A place to promote other projects that are affiliated with butterfly monitoring schemes
News of eBMS:
- Explanatory videos of the eBMS website
On the BCE YouTube channel, you can find several explanatory videos to better understand the eBMS website: how to create a new account, how to register a transect and its visits, and much more. Visit the channel to discover more.
- Final results of the ABLE project
For two years, we have been working on the European Pilot Project ABLE (Assessing ButterfLies in Europe) with incredible success in promoting and improving butterfly monitoring in Europe and producing high-quality Butterfly Indicators and useful tools for volunteers and coordinators.
You can find the results of the ABLE project: final reports, new schemes created, all material, new partners, and more. Go to the ABLE results section to discover more
- the eBMS App is ready!
You can download and use the new multilingual eBMS app, looking for "ButterflyCount" in AppleStore or App Store for Android.
It was created to do 15-min Count, counting butterflies for 15 minutes anywhere in Europe. The GPS tracks your route, area, or point of your search. You can also draw the recorded area. All transects registered on the eBMS website can be also done with the app! Just download it and log in with your eBMS account.
ButterflyCount has Picture Guides to help with butterfly identification offline. The app is translated into more than 10 languages and has the latest full list of the different butterfly species found across Europe – around 500 in total. You can record butterflies wherever you want!
To discover more go to eBMS data -> eBMS mobile application and see the new story in CEH
- Manual for Butterfly Transect Counts
A Manual with the information necessary to set up a transect and know the basic rules to follow in every visit to the transect. Download the Manual for Butterfly Transect Count to know everything about transects, the method used in the Butterfly Monitoring Schemes in Europe. This provides a robust method to collect butterfly monitoring data and allows us to compare between transects.
This manual is translated into several languages (Romania, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Slovak, Polish...). you can find the manual translated on the page, Materials to download other languages.
- Technical Report EU Butterfly Grassland Species 1990 - 2020
We are pleased to inform you that we have updated the EU Butterfly Indicator for Grassland species, 1990-2020. We produced a technical report to describe the indicator, it represents a major update on previous versions, through the incorporation of more and expanded datasets, together with new analysis techniques. It is the first major output from the ABLE and SPRING project. This would not have been possible without the effort of all the collaborators, national schemes, and volunteers that provide the data. Our appreciation to all of them.
The EU Butterfly Grassland Species 1990-2020 indicator is part of the monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) in an EU context, which can be accessed here. The grassland butterfly indicator contributes to Goal 15: Life on Land being; one of the two biodiversity indicators together with birds.