By Roy van Grunsven
One field of research where citizen scientists has been very important for a long time is the monitoring of biodiversity. There are several initiatives to stimulate monitoring of biodiversity in Europe. One of these is ABLE of Butterfly Conservation Europe, ABLE is setting up standardized monitoring of butterflies in Europe. Setting up citizen science projects is complex. For organisations that are not as experienced in citizen science as Butterfly Conservation Europe, ACTION is creating a toolkit to facilitate this and help avoiding pitfalls. However if specific knowledge is necessary for a citizen science task, this should also be made available to potential citizen scientists. Within ABLE field guides to identify the common butterflies for different parts of Europe have been made and a book for all species of west and central Europe ( https://assets.vlinderstichting.nl/docs/0b095bc2-0387-4785-9f7e-5f7a987b3468.pdf). While ACTION does not have the knowledge to produce the content we can help with the publication, hosting and distribution of these products and making them available to potential citizen scientists.