The sharp-eyed birds lift into flight the moment you open the door. The canny squirrels and darting lizards are up a tree at the first oof of your footfall. To study such cautious creatures, you need a quiet nature and a willingness to sit very still. Short of that, a window will do. Hardly anyone is willing to sit very still these days, but the impulse to gaze idly out a window remains a reliable human trait.
Butterflies, on the other hand, require no window to hide behind, no silence or stillness. September is high butterfly season here in Middle Tennessee, and these lovely creatures have more urgent work to do than keeping track of us. For local butterflies, it’s the final opportunity to mate and leave behind a new generation. For migrators flying south, it’s the last chance to feed and move on before cold catches them up.
Even if you know little about butterflies, September is the perfect time to count them in the South. Who are these floating flowers moving so gently among us? Does it even matter that we know?
It matters very much.
This year, the journal Science released a study that found steep declines in U.S. butterfly populations — some 22 percent across 554 species. Over the past 20 years, notes the study, “the prevalence of declines throughout all regions in the United States highlights an urgent need to protect butterflies from further losses.”
The study’s authors arrived at these numbers by analyzing data collected in 35 citizen-science programs across the country. If it weren’t for apps like iNaturalist and eButterfly and population counts conducted by volunteers for nonprofits like the North American Butterfly Association, the Monarch Joint Venture, the North American Butterfly Monitoring Network and Butterfly Conservation — among many, many others — we wouldn’t know how many butterflies we’ve lost or what we can do to help struggling populations rebound.
God knows, our government doesn’t care about the health and safety of butterflies or any other species, including our own. For now, at least, it’s up to us to care. And the first step toward caring, as is so often the case in conservation, is getting to know our wild neighbors.
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