Protect butterflies: Choose the butterfly of the year!

Protect butterflies: Choose the butterfly of the year!

Austria is calling for the big butterfly vote! In an exciting campaign that puts biodiversity in the foreground, all nature lovers can choose their favorite butterfly from the ten most liked butterflies until March 10, 2025. This initiative aims to underline the immense importance of butterflies for our ecosystem, as Christa Lackner and Matthias Wobornik from “Nature in the Garden” emphasize. According to them, both the caterpillars and the adult butterflies are essential parts of the food cycle for birds and other animals, and they also play a key role as flower pollinators for many plants.

Not only is the campaign informative, but it is also supported by the butterfly app, which has documented almost one million butterfly observations since its launch in 2016. This citizen participation promotes research and species protection and highlights the importance of active participation in recording native butterflies. Ronald Würflinger, Secretary General of Blühendes Österreich, praises the app as an outstanding European showcase project. Users can easily report butterfly sightings and within seconds upload images to a gallery that are valuable to the community and research. Since its launch, around 27,000 users have reported 130,000 butterflies and built a huge image gallery with over a million “likes”, as the success of the app shows, Blühendes Österreich reported.

Competition and incentives for participants

In order to increase motivation to take part in the voting, attractive prizes will be raffled off among all voters, including 25 gardening books and five shopping vouchers. This is part of the cooperation between Blooming Austria and “Nature in the Garden”, which are committed to a species-rich and diverse nature. The initiators call on all citizens to cast their vote for the butterfly of the year and thus actively contribute to the protection of biodiversity. Voting helps create greater awareness of the importance of these fascinating creatures, which often operate in the background.