The Jersey Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

Butterflies are highly sensitive to environmental conditions and have rapid lifecycles. This makes them extremely well placed among British terrestrial insects to act as indicators of the state of the environment.

The Jersey Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (JBMS) has been tracking the fortunes of butterflies at sites across the Island for the past 20 years.

The scheme forms part of the integrated monitoring programme for Jersey. The scheme is financed and run by the Government of Jersey, but it's almost entirely based on volunteer recorders, making it highly cost-effective.

Volunteer citizen scientists are at the heart of this monitoring scheme, with a team of dedicated volunteers walking transects at locations across Jersey each week from spring through autumn, identifying and counting the butterflies they encounter.

The survey is based on a well-established and enjoyable recording method developed by Butterfly Conservation.

The resulting dataset provides a wealth of information on the trends and status of butterflies in Jersey, and can produce important insights into almost all aspects of butterfly ecology.

A report on the data collected over the first 10 years of the JBMS was produced in 2014: The State of Jersey’s Butterflies: Jersey Butterfly Monitoring Scheme 2004 to 2013

Get Involved

For further information about the scheme, including how you can get involved, email wildaboutjersey@gov.je

Aims of the Jersey Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

The aims of the JBMS are to:

Provide information at local levels on changes in the abundance of butterfly species.
Detect trends which may indicate changes in their status.
Provide a reliable long-term reference against which population changes in species studied elsewhere on individual sites, or in other countries, can be monitored.
Monitor changes at individual sites.
Assess the impact of local factors such as habitat change caused by management.
Provide information on aspects of the population ecology and phenology of individual species, both in relation to the effect of environmental changes (including climate change) and as a contribution to butterfly ecology.

Resources for JBMS Volunteers

Identification Resources

The prospect of having to learning how to identify all the butterflies that you might see when out walking your transect can be daunting for new volunteers. Fortunately, there are some excellent resources that will help you on your journey to becoming an expert butterfly surveyor.

One essential resource is the total count list for the transect that you walk. This list gives the total numbers for each butterfly species that has been recorded on your transect/s. The JBMS coordinator will typically provide you with this list when you sign up to walk a transect. Once you have a copy you can start becoming familiar with butterflies that you are likely to encounter using the resources listed below:

Identify a Butterfly - Butterfly Conservation

Identification - UK Butterflies

iRecord Butterflies app for iOS and Andriod.

Lewington, R. 2019. Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland. Bloomsbury Wildlife Guides.

Newland, D., Still, R., Swash, A., Tomlinson, D. 2020. Britain's Butterflies: A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland. 4th Edition. Wildguides.

Another fantastic resource for becoming more familiar with Jersey's Butterflies (and other Insects) is the Insects of the Channel Islands Facebook Group. On this page you can see what butterflies other local recorders and photographers are seeing when out and about. You can also post your own photographs if you need help with identification.

JBMS Transect Survey Methodology

If you are a new volunteer butterfly surveyor, watch Butterfly Conservation's training video explaining the transect survey methodology:

Training Video - Standard Transect Methodology

Volunteer Working Agreement

To register as a volunteer for the JBMS you will first need to complete a volunteer working agreement form.

Butterfly volunteer working agreement

It is important to fill in this form as it provides insurance cover in case of an accident on site. It also sets out the lone working procedure for your safety.

JBMS coordinator can provide a copy of the survey risk assessment.

2024 Survey Week

For the 2024 survey season, the survey week runs from Monday to Sunday, starting on Monday 1 April.

Recording Forms

Existing volunteers can find digital survey forms below:

Butterfly recording form 10 sections

Butterfly recording form 14 sections

Submitting Your Data

There are two options for submitting your butterfly survey data. Whichever option you choose we recommend that you take a digital photograph of your completed survey forms (most modern smartphone cameras are perfectly adequate for this) at the end of each transect walk as a backup in case your paper form goes missing.

1. Enter Your Data Online

If you feel confident enough to enter your data yourself, you can do so online using the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Website.

In order to enter your survey data, you first need to sign up for an account on the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Website. Once you have an account, the next step is to contact the JBMS coordinator via email to link your account to the transect/s that you walk. Only once your account has been linked to the transect/s that you walk will you be able to enter your data.

All JBMS transect sites are already setup within the UKBMS system, so please don't create a new site for the transect that you walk.

Before heading to the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Website to enter your data, its a good idea to watch Butterfly Conservation's training video explaining how to enter your survey data online:

Training Video - How to Enter Your Survey Data on ukbms.org

While the video above walks you through the process of entering data for a 'Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey', the process is very similar for entering your JBMS transect survey data. Just make sure you click on 'Transect' rather than 'WCBS-BC' on the 'Enter Count' page.

2. Submit Your Completed Survey Forms by Post

While its really helpful if you are able to enter your data online, there is also the option of submitting your completed survey forms by post at the end of the season to: Jersey Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Coordinator, Natural Environment, Howard Davis Farm, Trinity. JE3 5JP.