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climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
Cool photos from the garden
In 90 minutes, 50+ volunteers put in the start of this new area of heavily-shrubbed forest at what used to be the edge of a lawn in Taylor Creek Park:
Rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4671
Numerous declines have been documented across insect groups, and the potential consequences of insect losses are dire. Butterflies are the most surveyed insect taxa, yet analyses have been limited in geographic scale or rely on data from a single monitoring program. Using records of 12.6 million individual butterflies from >76,000 surveys across 35 monitoring programs, we characterized overall and species-specific butterfly abundance trends across the contiguous United States. Between 2000 and 2020, total butterfly abundance fell by 22% across the 554 recorded species. Species-level declines were widespread, with 13 times as many species declining as increasing. The prevalence of declines throughout all regions in the United States highlights an urgent need to protect butterflies from further losses.