Spring comes with the expectation of more sunshine, flowers and butterflies. However, there’s recently published research suggesting there are fewer butterflies in the U.S. If you feel like you’ve been seeing fewer butterflies over the last couple of decades, there’s now data to back that up.
Researchers have been counting on observations made by people around the country to help track butterfly populations. The study shows overall, from 2000 to 2020, butterfly populations have decreased by 22%, which essentially boils down to a loss of 1 in 5 butterflies.
“The same butterfly species are doing better in New York and other parts of the Northeast than they are down south, which is likely a signal of climate change. So, as things are warming up, they're expanding their ranges northward further up into Canada. And so, the populations here aren’t being hit quite as hard,” said Eliza Grames, assistant professor with the department of biological sciences at Binghamton University.
Grames shares that those insects serve an important function in our ecosystem as they are pollinators. There’s an annual count of butterflies around the 4th of July contributed to by the public, and those observations add to the overall findings of this research.
“We don't have as good a data for other pollinators. And so, if we think that this 22% reduction in butterflies is also applying to all the other pollinators, that really expands the amount of insect biodiversity that's been lost,” said Grames.
Grames also shared there are some things that can be in a backyard like planting pollinator friendly plants, or leaving a strip of yard un mowed, or leaving sticks where they are because it can be a home for bees.
“Some of these butterflies, they'll have one generation per year. Some can even have 2 or 3 generations if the conditions are right. And so that means the conservation actions that we do, even on a really small scale, like I'm talking about the scale of your own backyard, can actually really benefit local butterfly populations,” said Grames.