Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies & Moths International Symposium

Girona, Spain
6–10 April 2027
Girona

The Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies & Moths congress is a highly relevant event for the scientific community dedicated to research on the ecology and conservation of butterflies at an international scale. This congress brings together researchers, specialists, conservationists, and butterfly enthusiasts.

Since the 1970s, a generation of outstanding professionals have joined forces across Europe to give a voice to nature conservation, and more specifically, to the conservation of butterflies and moths. They have led a network of volunteers that today constitutes the largest standardized insect monitoring platform in the world—the European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (eBMS)—with over 10,000 volunteers since 1990, more than 600 active monitoring sites, and 29 participating countries. At the same time, they have built a scientific community with numerous impactful publications and have applied this knowledge to the conservation of butterflies in their habitats, generating valuable field experience and rescuing several species from extinction. Various organizations at the European level have been key to achieving many of these milestones, such as the inclusion of the Grassland Butterfly Indicator as an official European Union indicator, which is used to measure progress toward the goals of the recent Nature Restoration Law in Europe (EU Regulation 2024/1991), aiming to restore 30% of our ecosystems by 2030.

To date, international symposia on this topic have been organized alternately in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In Spain, the new generation of biologists and naturalists has taken up the legacy of our predecessors, with the enthusiasm to continue their work and promote science and nature conservation in the countries of southern Europe. Joining forces, the Granollers Natural Sciences Museum (MCNG), BETA Tech Center, and SOCEME, under the umbrella of Butterfly Conservation Europe, will organize the Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies and Moths International Symposium, in collaboration with Universitat de Girona.

We therefore welcome this new international congress on the future of butterflies, which will take place at the Palau de Congressos de Girona (Catalonia) in 2027, hoping it will be both a tribute to those who have brought us this far and a springboard for future achievements.

We look forward to seeing you there!