Recommendation 1

HM Government Accepted

Defra agrees that long term monitoring of pollinators is crucial to building our understanding of the actions we need to take to protect them. We have recognised this as one of the 4 priorities of the current National Pollinator Strategy, ‘strengthening the evidence base’, and contains several commitments to improve this area. For example, we committed to sustaining a long-term monitoring programme to better understand pollinators’ status and the causes of any declines, and to assess the population-level impacts of management actions on pollinators. One of the key sources of monitoring data we have is generated by volunteer-led activities. One example of how we’ve harnessed this is through setting up the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS) which is working on developing annual trend estimates. PoMS was established in 2017 by the Pollinator Monitoring and Research Partnership (Defra, Devolved Administrations, research institutes and volunteer organisations) and delivers standardised approaches to monitoring pollinators across Great Britain. PoMS has delivered two large-scale surveys since 2017: the Flower-Insect Timed Count (FIT Count) using a downloadable app, and a 1 km square survey, which uses pan-traps to capture samples of insects from a set of 95 1km squares across the UK. Overall, since 2017 a total of 12,187 FIT Counts have been submitted under the scheme, representing 2,031 hours of observation undertaken by 1,456 recorders (volunteer and professional) across the UK. There is a clear channel for data collected by amateur groups to be incorporated and used. Step by step instructions on how to complete and share the results of FIT counts are included on the PoMS website. As a relatively young initiative, PoMS’s data and trends are still developing and not ready to feed into “official statistics”. However, the team is working on enhancing modelling and metrics to ultimately supply data for national indicators, maintaining collaboration with Defra throughout this process. Subject to continuation of funding, the ambition is to: 1) Have annually produced PoMS statistics showing change over time for pollinators (available by 2027, and then looking to become approved as official statistics). 2) Ensure PoMS data are incorporated into national Biodiversity Indicators by 2030. This allows up to three years to go through the process of getting PoMS statistics approved as official statistics and to develop analytical methods that combine PoMS with other data sources. PoMS also has ambitions to expand on the range of insect groups for which species-level data can be generated, beyond the bees and hoverflies, using high-throughput DNA sequencing on both archived and future samples. This would require additional funding to develop and then routinely implement. PoMS will complement longer-running insect monitoring carried out by citizen scientists including the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), which began in 1976 and provides UK-wide annual statistics showing trends in 58 of the 59 regularly occurring butterfly species. UKBMS is organised and funded through a partnership between Butterfly Conservation, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, British Trust for Ornithology, and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.