Butterflies are sensitive to change and loss of habitat and are considered to be good indicators of climate change. So apart from being an intrinsic and important part of our natural heritage, they are also good 'indicator' species.
There is concern that species such as the Large Heath is suffering decline because of the loss of their habitat (raised and blanket bog) and the Marsh Fritillary is an endangered European species.
Large
Heath
Marsh Fritillary
1970s-1980
The first surveys of the butterflies of Ireland were compiled by the Biological
Records Centre of An Foras Forbartha and final version published in 1980
(Ní Lamhna). A very major contributor to these Atlases was Paul Hillis who did
extensive field work, and encouraged other recorders. Important contributors
were Sean Fleming, Patrick O'Mahony, the Cork Naturalist Association, Ian
Rippey, Robert Nash and Ken Preston..
1998-1999
During this period The Dublin Naturalists' Field Club (DNFC), in co-operation
with Butterfly Conservation (UK), collected butterfly records from
recorders all over Ireland, backdated to 1995.. The data collected during this time was used in the
production of "The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland"
which was published in March 2001 (see Noticeboard).
In the short space of two years, assisted by many butterfly enthusiasts, we collected a very substantial amount of information on the occurrence and distribution of the butterflies of Ireland. Our efforts received the support of the Heritage Council.
2000-2004
The results published in the Atlas were very encouraging, but still were very
much a beginning, and showed that much more systematic work was needed in order
to build up an accurate picture of the habitat, distribution and frequency of
all our butterfly species.
So we extended our survey to include 2000-2004 and the results for this five year period was published as a Millennium Atlas update - State of Butterflies of Britain and Ireland - in May 2006
2013
The DNFC is continuing to collect data on butterflies and 2012 is the
second year of the five year cycle of 2010 to 2014.
Ireland's Butterflies A Review (David Nash, Trevor Boyd & Deirdre Hardiman) was published in 2012 and covers information gathered from 1995-2009 for all Ireland.
We would like to recruit as many volunteer recorders as
possible throughout the country.
If you would like to help with these surveys by
doing some recording in 2013 please download a Record
Sheet
into your word processor and, if you wish for further information,
contact
The Dublin Naturalists' Field Club
If you currently have any records for 2012 or earlier in your notebooks please return them to the DNFC as soon as possible.
Please visit The Dublin Naturalists' Field Club butterfly website: Butterfly Ireland
