Butterfly Emergency 2024

Throughout 2024, PROSPECTS has been performing pollinator surveys at Peel Park & the Coppice LNR as part of the Peel Park Pollinator's project. A huge thank you to anyone who assisted with the surveys, especially during a very poor year for it.

We'll be submitting/analysing all the data over the next couple weeks, but we wanted to share some shocking preliminary data from the weekly butterfly walks. The following chart shows the total number of butterflies counted in 2022, 2023, and 2024, revealing a shocking ~70% drop in butterflies from 2022 to 2024. We still managed to record 14 different species of butterfly, which is two less than in 2022 but 6 less than in 2023.

This data is coming at the same time as Butterfly Conservation's declaration of a Butterfly Emergency, after they have seen similarly shocking drops in the data received during the Big Butterfly Count this year. From Butterfly Conservation:

Overall, you spotted just seven butterflies on average per 15-minute Count, a drop of almost 50% on last year’s average of 12, and the lowest in the 14-year history of the Big Butterfly Count.

The incredibly poor weather this year is an obvious factor in the low numbers, but this is on top of existing pressures such as habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use which have been causing a decline in pollinator populations over the past century. This year has made it all the more apparent that we should be continuing to restore and create habitat for pollinators. We are striving to continue this with the local community at Pleck Meadow, Peel Park, and throughout Hyndburn. If you have any ideas for how your local green space can be improved for pollinators, please get in touch.

In absence of the weekly pollinator walks, we hope to continue with some seasonal walks and seed collecting walks/sessions. We want to make these accessible for everyone, let us know if you are interested! Furthermore, please express your interest if you would like to take part in any pollinator surveys next year. If you wanted to attend this year but weren't able to make it, please let us know why and we will do our best to accommodate in the future.