What will you do with the records I submit?

Your butterfly sightings (but not your email) will be immediately accessible to any organisation or registered users via iRecord and they will be able to use them for non-commercial purposes. iRecord also enables your sightings to be seen and checked by butterfly experts associated with the Garden Butterfly Survey and Butterflies for the New Millennium recording scheme, including Butterfly Conservation staff and volunteers (also known as County Recorders). These individuals will additionally have special access to your email address for their role in checking (verifying) your sightings. 

You may be contacted via the email address you provide if there are any queries about your sightings. This vital process of verification means data are checked and, where necessary adjusted, before any records are added to the UK butterfly recording scheme (Butterflies for the New Millennium) database.

Other organisations such as Local Environmental Records Centres, other conservation bodies and scientific researchers may also access the butterfly records from iRecord or from Butterfly Conservation to support their work. County Recorders may include copies of your records within the local datasets they manage. Your records might be published, for example as part of a distribution map and dataset.

Your Garden Butterfly Survey sightings will not be used as part of the Big Butterfly Count as this has a different methodology (requiring a 15 minute count of specific target species during a short period each summer), so please take part in the Big Butterfly Count separately from the Garden Butterfly Survey. 

Further detail of how your personal data and records are processed, stored and shared can be found in the Privacy Notice and Terms of Use.