Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent estimate he has made of the level of the butterfly population across the UK.

This Government is committed to restoring and protecting nature, including pollinator species such as butterflies.

The most recently published statistics on butterflies in the United Kingdom and in England for 2023 provides information on UK butterfly abundance as well as the major drivers of decline. In summary, on average the abundance of butterflies across the UK continues to show a long-term decline. This is due to a range of factors including weather patterns, habitat loss, pollution and the use of pesticides.

Defra partly funds the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (UK PoMS) which is the first scheme in the world to have begun (since 2017) generating systematic data on the abundance of bees, hoverflies and other flower-visiting insects at a national scale. Data collected through PoMS insect surveys contribute to providing an invaluable resource from which to measure trends in pollinator populations.

PoMS complements longer-running insect monitoring carried out by citizen scientists including the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) and the Big Butterfly Count that runs from July into August.