Displaying items by tag: postman butterfly
Butterflies decline by 20 percent since 2000 due in large part to pesticide use
A postman butterfly feeds on a bloom in the Tennessee Aquarium’s Butterfly Garden in Chattanooga. At any one time, the garden may host 1,000 to 1,500 butterflies representing more than 200 species. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium
A third of species declined by half in U.S.; relatively simple steps can improve outlook
This story was originally published by The Conversation.
If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination.
From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. That’s 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in.
We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species.
Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 butterfly species we were able to study declined by more than half. Twenty-two species fell by more than 90 percent. Only nine actually increased in numbers.
Some species’ numbers are dropping faster than others. The West Coast lady, a fairly widespread species across the western U.S., dropped by 80 percent in 20 years. Given everything we know about its biology, it should be doing fine — it has a wide range and feeds on a variety of plants. Yet its numbers are absolutely tanking across its range.