Butterflies in the United Kingdom and in England: 2023
Trends in butterflies: habitat specialists and species of the wider countryside in the UK and in England.
Documents
Details
Butterflies are considered to provide a good indication of the broad state of the environment because they respond rapidly to changes in environmental conditions and habitat management, occur in a wide range of habitats, and are representative of many other insects.
The butterfly population indices have been compiled in conjunction with the Butterfly Conservation, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
Since the last releases of Butterflies in the UK and in England, these official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation and were designated accredited official statistics in August 2024. Accredited official statistics status means that these statistics comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics, and it is our responsibility to maintain compliance with these standards.
As part of the improvements to the publication this year, we have combined the two releases into a single release. We hope that this will help users understand differences in data or trends in England compared to the UK. We have also included more indicators in this release, including indices for specialist and generalist species in England, indices for all woodland and farmland species as well as woodland and farmland specialists. This analysis will allow greater insight into species using these habitats.
Updates to this page
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Annual Update.
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Butterflies Development Plan added.
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2022 release published.
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CSV title attachments amended.
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Annual update.
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Minor adjustments made to ensure all bar charts are visible on pdf statistical release attachment.
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New publication including data up to 2020. In addition edits made to the wording on the home page and document titles of the attachments.
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some amendments required on one of the charts
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Unaccessible attachment removed.
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Accessible pdf document added as an additional attachment.
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Annual update.
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2018 data published
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Updated indicators published for 1976 to 2017
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Butterfly trend data up to 2016 published
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First published.