One wildlife charity organization described the situation as a national emergency of butterflies after its Big Butterfly Count noted the smallest numbers.
It has been fourteen years straight of counting. Wilts and cones affected by wet weather This year’s figures are partly down to the damp weather, but according to Butterfly Conservation, it is still very worrying when one looks at the figures over the longer term.
Butterfly Emergency
It is urging the government to ban the use of pesticides that affect butterflies and bees “before it gets worse”.
According to Dr Richard Fox, the head of science for the charity, it found that butterflies are at ‘their lowest ebb’ after 50 years of decline.
“Butterflies are being considered as a species that makes biological predictions that if they are facing problems, other species and possibly the overall environment is also being affected in the same way,” he said.
Neonicotinoid pesticides were suspended in the UK in early 2018 for non-emergency use but have been approved recurrently four times to control a virus that affects sugar beet.
An official from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has stated that the organization is ‘determined to act in the interest of nature and will adapt current regulations as well as prohibit the use of neonicotinoid pesticides hazardous to pollinators but no time frame has been provided for such changes.
The Big Butterfly Count 2024 was held in July and August across the United Kingdom, when thousands of people recorded for more than 15 minutes how many butterflies they saw, including the absence.
On average, the participants counted seven butterflies per each count and this was the lowest number since the initiation of this scheme 14 years ago. The average patrol last year was 12.
Butterfly Conservation has claimed that last year was the worst that had been ever recorded for the common blue, holly blue, green-veined white, small white, small tortoiseshell, painted lady, and Scotch argus.
This year’s decline in butterfly numbers is believed to have been compounded by the wet spring and late summer heat which arrived later than usual.
More generalized data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme – one of the oldest insect monitoring programs in the world – demonstrates yearly changes in butterfly abundance connected with the weather while presenting the general tendency to a decrease in numbers due to climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and pesticides.
Dr Marc Botham of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has said, that 33 percent of species have had statistically significant declines in their population on sites that have been surveyed in the United Kingdom over the past 48 years.
“It does not take much thinking to understand that there is simply not much space left to live in and the areas that are available are not suitable in any case,” he said.
“We should be doing all we can to ramp up the overall quality of habitat for those [butterflies and the other wildlife] to do well.”