Holidays in Hungary with a difference. Ecotours is working in partnership with the European Interest Group of Butterfly Conservation to offer a conservation working holiday within one of Hungary's national parks. If you are interested in participating in a worthwhile project that will contribute to butterfly conservation in Hungary please register your interest now. Further details will be available on the Ecotours and BC-EIG websites at a later date.

Background

The first links between the West Midlands branch of Butterfly Conservation (Europe’s largest insect charity based in the UK) and Hungary date back to 2003 when a group from the branch went to Hungary on the first ever butterfly trip organised by Ecotours.
Both the abundance and diversity of species recorded during this visit (over 100 species of butterfly and 250+ species of moth) was impressive but there was concern that this fantastic diversity was threatened by the cessation of traditional management practices. A problem which it was feared might be further exacerbated by Hungary’s accession to the European Union.

Here things might have rested but the seed of an idea had been sown. The number of active butterfly and moth enthusiasts in Hungary was tiny, there was a lack of appreciation of the importance of Hungary for Lepidoptera in a European context (with many of the butterflies recorded during the first visit being those becoming increasingly scarce or non-existent in western Europe such as the Neptis rivularis Hungarian Glider and Maculinea nausithous Dusky Large Blue. Was there a way that Butterfly Conservation in the UK could play a role? How relevant was butterfly conservation in Hungary to what was happen-ing in the UK? It seemed that the furthering of links between Butterfly Conservation in the UK and other parts of Europe could be justified on many levels. It was clear that a number of species threatened in the UK were still relatively common in continental Europe and perhaps the encouragement of further studies abroad could assist us in our own conservation efforts at home. For all these good reasons, there had been increasing support for the idea of Butterfly Conservation taking a more European wide perspective. This support finally culminated in the establishment of Butterfly Conservation Europe in 2005. …
…The (Monitoring Project in Hungary) project received the backing of Dr. Martin Warren, Chief Executive of Butterfly Conservation UK, and became the first transnational project to be undertaken under the aus-pices of Butterfly Conservation Europe. Ten volunteers were subsequently recruited to work in the Őrség National Park during the period 29th July -04th August, 2006.

After the trip Cllr John Reeve said to a newspaper: “During our species transects and surveys we identified 100 species of butterfly and over 300 species of moths over the two weeks in quantities that I have only ever seen before in places like Ecuador.”

Apart of the extremely valuable data collected during the monitoring programme and presented (reports are avaliable here: Aggtelek NP, Őrség NP) to both national Park directorates, BC UK, BC Europe and Ecotours Ltd. also supported Szalkay Lepidopterist Society with 10% of the income of the project. Furthermore Ecotours decided to contribute to Aggtelek National Park for the purchase of some highly important butterfly areas in its buffer zone.

Dates for 2008:
It is possible to participate either in the first or second week or both.

1st week: May 24-31 (Aggtelek National Park)
2nd week: June 1-8 (Bükk National Park)

2 weeks: May 24-June 8

Other relevant documents:

Trip to Hungary - Note by Ian Duncan

Butterfly trip to remember - Solihull Times

Leaflet

If you wish to join the Conservation Project please write to info@ecotours.hu for further details.