To the map

For the conservation of butterflies and moths, as well as to help policymakers in selecting areas with a high insect biodiversity, it is essential to identify and prioritize areas where efforts should be concentrated to preserve butterfly and moth populations and avoid their decline.
Important Butterfly and Moth Areas (IBMA) are defined as sites of international significance for the conservation of butterflies and moths which should be large enough to safeguard a viable population of a species, but at the same time, should be small enough to be conserved in their entirety. To identify IBMAs, Butterfly Conservation Europe and partners developed a set of robust and standardized criteria based on observational data, which might be applied to any region in the world. On this website, the IBMA for the Netherlands are presented.

More detailed information on the methodology