Our Objectives

The European Pollinator Identification Courses (EPIC) is a two-year project funded by the Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission. Its primary objective is to enhance knowledge of pollinator identification and sampling across the 27 EU Member States. As part of the EU’s commitment to reversing pollinator decline by 2030, described in the Nature Restoration Law, EPIC supports the EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU-PoMS) (https://wikis.ec.europa.eu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=23462107).

The project will run from 2025 until the end of 2026 and aims to strengthen the para-taxonomic capacity in the 27 EU Member States with regard to wild bees, hoverflies and butterflies, and to support preparation for the timely implementation of the EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU-PoMS). The project is organized into three lots : EPIC-Bee, EPIC-Hoverfly and EPIC-Butterfly.

The three EPIC lots will provide training activities to establish a network of para-taxonomic experts in all EU Member States, capable of identifying pollinators at the species level, both in the field and in the laboratory. The target audience of the trainings are prospective taxonomists involved in fieldwork, monitoring, pollinator research and laboratory identification.