Butterfly Transect
In spring 2023, Devenish Bradshaw Charitable Trust volunteers set up a butterfly transect on the Laverstock Water Meadows.
Transects are walks that follow a set route, with the data collected on the water meadows feeding into the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) which is one of the longest running insect monitoring schemes in the world. The UKBMS dataset is a hugely important resource for understanding changes in insect populations.
Butterflies can indicate the state of the environment as they are highly sensitive, with their presence, or absence, allowing us to assess the impacts of climate change and habitat management practices. If recorded and monitored over a longer period of time, the datasets created can allow for an accurate assessment of their trends at site level.
The transect route was walked weekly during a 26-week period between 1st April and 29th September. A total of 2651 butterflies were counted (23 species), with numbers peaking at the start of July. The most abundant species by far was the Meadow brown, followed by the Small white and Gatekeeper. It will be exciting to see what this year’s survey yields.
For further information about the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, visit www.ukbms.org
To see details of our transect, visit our UKBMS site page here.