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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davidbr" data-source="post: 1658901" data-attributes="member: 58902">Out of interest, exactly who has the responsibility for assessing butterfly records in the UK? Is there an organisation analagous to the BBRC, with a similar role of assessing submitted reports for identification/origin and maintaining a British List of butterflies? Although I'd like to think I could name any regular species I might see in the UK, my main area of interest is in plants and birds; I don't know anything about the butterfly-recording world beyond what I read on websites such as this. It's something that's always made me curious, though, ever since an ID book I had years ago mentioned that "around 40" butterfly species had been recorded in Britain over and above the resident breeders. I've never been able to find out what these are, or track down any kind of official list; the occasional message comes up on Birdguides under "insect reports", but I can't remember anything amazingly out of the ordinary. You'd think, though, that if Mediterranean birds can occur as vagrants in this country, butterflies from the same region could do the same.Also, what is the main objection to non-native species being released; if, say, the Queen of Spain Fritillary was to establish a feral population somewhere, what kind of genuine concerns would there be? These butterflies, after all, must be able to co-exist with our "British" species in their range on the Continent - why couldn't they do the same here?</blockquote>

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