Make eButterfly Your New Year’s Resolution in 2016

Since its inception just a few years ago, eButterfly has grown in leaps and bounds thanks to the dedication of many butterfly watchers and professional lepidopterists. We hear from many users who tell us how eButterfly has helped them learn more about butterflies and has made their butterflying more fun and have more purpose. We also hear from many great butterfly watchers who say that they want to submit to eButterfly more often or that they “keep meaning to get started” but have yet to “take the plunge.” Together, let’s make 2016 the year without regret! Make your New Year’s resolution to use eButterfly! With all the improvements we’ve made, eButterfly is easier to use than ever. Give it a try today, for yourself, for watchers everywhere, and for the butterflies we all care about.

Every butterfly observation has value. Whether it is a rare species from a remote northern bog, or an observation of a Monarch in a backyard — every sighting you contribute is helpful. The world is a big place, and to understand what is truly happening with butterfly populations requires contributions from as many people and places as possible.

In 2015 alone, 560 species were reported to eButterfly represented by nearly 10,000 checklists and over 18,000 photographs! Although every sighting is absolutely useful, we would also like to make sure that you understand how checklists that include all species you observed, and checklists that have information about distance covered and time spent observing butterflies are most valuable for research and conservation.

Resolve to Make eButterfly Part of Your 2016

• Enter sightings in eButterfly. If you aren’t sure how to get started, we’ve got you covered— learn more here on our help pages.
• Already an eButterflier? Why not introduce someone else to eButterfly. If you already submit to eButterfly consistently, thank you! But please consider helping someone new get started with as your New Year’s Resolution. Surely you have a friend or butterfly watching acquaintance who could use a bit of help getting started with the eButterfly website, understanding how to collect and submit a complete checklist. If you are a part of a local email list or Facebook group, get those friends to make eButterfly their New Year’s Resolution as well.
• Learn more about your local butterfly community. New users sometimes feel like their data aren’t “interesting” enough to submit. This simply is not true. eButterfly is intended for anyone and everyone. Having this information coming in from everywhere gives us the powerful ability to learn about butterflies at a location, or about a specific species across its entire range. This is only the tip of the iceberg for exploring the information that eButterfly has to offer.
• Enter your historic sightings. Longtime butterfly watchers sometimes tell us that they don’t participate because they could never get all their old records into the system. This shouldn’t be a barrier—the butterflies you are seeing today are valuable data points that are being lost with every day you delay. For those that do want to upload their older data, we can help you make that a reality if you contact us.

eButterfly continues to get better and better, and we are committed to continuing that in 2016. Our New Year’s Resolution at eButterfly is to continue our pursuit of excellence as a ground-breaking system for entering checklists of butterflies and connecting the butterfly watching community to science and conservation—while at the same time enjoying, reporting, and sharing sightings of the butterflies that we all love. We look forward to having your sightings in 2016 as we make this the best year yet for eButterfly.