During summer 2026, the Lancashire and Cumbria Branches of Butterfly Conservation, with some support from Butterfly Conservation staff, funded and supported a group of Lancaster University students through three small internship projects: Mountain Ringlet monitoring in Cumbria, Large Heath survey and habitat assessment in Lancashire and Cumbria, and Community Wings work in Lancaster.
The aim was to provide worthwhile practical conservation and community engagement experience and is run in partnership with Lancaster University.
Students organised a moth morning with the youth organisation Escape2Make, supported Big Butterfly Count activity and ran events at Lancaster University and locations around Lancaster. Across two main pop-up days they spoke to more than 80 people, recorded more than 130 butterflies, involved three additional volunteers and raised £50 through butterfly pin badge sales. They also produced material encouraging people to participate in the Big Butterfly Count.
All butterfly sightings were recorded through the iRecord Butterflies app, ensuring that the survey work also contributed useful records.
They took part in Mountain Ringlet surveys generating 14 positive records across several networks, including two networks where the species had not been recorded for more than ten years, and found a Mountain Ringlet at Middle How on Grasmere Common, a new site for the species. Large Heath interns supported survey and habitat assessment connected to our developing peatland work. At Summergill Farm around 30 Large Heath were recorded, contributing monitoring information to the farm’s Countryside Stewardship scheme.
The Lancaster work also allowed us to explore how students and volunteers might contribute to two wider Butterfly Conservation initiatives: Wild Spaces and Butterfly Friendly Councils. Lancaster City Council has signed the Butterfly Friendly pledge.
What did the interns think?
Overall, we have improved many skills that we do not get a chance to work on at university. The main one being public outreach, with us having to learn what will get people to come up to a stall that they never intended on going to and how to speak to different people about moths and butterflies. Talking to teenagers and lecturers needs two very different approaches, which we got to practise. Another skill that we got to develop was leadership, as we had to effectively communicate with and organise up to three volunteers during both pop-up events.
From this internship we also learnt how to write formally to organisations like Escape2Make, Williamson Park and Lancaster University. This was in order to plan our events and to get our promotional content out via them. This internship taught me the lengthy process it takes to hold events and how to do it.
Before the internship I had such a limited knowledge on both moths and butterflies. Now I have learnt how easy it is to get involved and how to identify different moth and butterfly species. I definitely would like to get involved with future butterfly conservation events and do more outreach work to get the public involved. I have just been elected President of the Lancaster Environment Centre Society and so hopefully in the future I can co-ordinate events where members of the society can volunteer for butterfly conservation as it will be great for their CV as work experience and I know they will get lots out of the experience.
Betty
This has been a great experience for me and the fellow interns like Jess. Being able to create local events during the Community Wings Internship has allowed Jess to go outside her comfort zone and build confidence in organising events and encourage local participation and raise awareness in butterfly and moth ecology. Whilst I similarly found being on an internship with Butterfly Conservation focusing on surveying both the large heath and mountain ringlet butterflies have allowed me to improve my identification skills and increased my confidence in completing butterfly surveys. For both of us this experience of working with Butterfly Conservation has been a very valuable and enjoyable experience and will support our future education at university including our dissertations and our future careers.
Emily
Thanks to the Butterfly Conservation internship scheme, students like myself get to be involved in meaningful work carrying out ongoing monitoring to protect the future of this unique species.
Grace
I have really enjoyed working as part of a team with the other intern to plan and host our events. The interview that I had for the internship was really useful and will help me prepare for future interviews. My confidence speaking to other people has greatly increased as a result of having a stall for the Big Butterfly Count events and I have learnt how to get people engaged and interested in butterflies and moths. I have also learnt how to communicate effectively with other organisations like Escape2Make and Williamson Park in order to arrange events. I had never made any social media videos before, so that was a new skill that I developed too. We also improved our leadership skills by managing a small group of volunteers who helped out with our events. Additionally, I have had to learn how to simplify scientific concepts into words that the demographic that I was speaking to would understand. Furthermore, through practice I was able to improve my timekeeping skills by keeping to the five-minute slot that we had to do our presentation in.
Jess
