New Jersey Butterfly Club field trip to Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area. (Photo courtesy of NJBC)
Butterflies in Decline
By Sarah Teo
The Silver-Bordered Fritillary butterfly found itself reclassified this year on the New Jersey endangered species list, moved from “threatened” to “endangered” — but according to Sharon Wander, “It’s already gone. Those lists lag far behind reality, unfortunately.” Wander, an environmental consultant and past president of the New Jersey Butterfly Club (NJBC), says warming temperatures statewide are to blame, since the small orange-and-black insect prefers cooler climates. “Over time, it’s been found in higher and higher elevations … and in New Jersey, you quickly run out of elevation.” She warns that other species will likely disappear statewide in the coming years, including Leonard’s Skipper, Indian Skipper, and Common Roadside Skipper.
The trend continues nationwide, across all butterfly species: the U.S. has seen a 22 percent drop in populations over a 20-year time period (2000-2020), as published this past March in the journal Science. The same is true globally, according to the study’s writers, “especially in Europe.” “Acting threats” include the usual suspects impacting biodiversity: climate change, habitat loss, and pesticide use.
Red-spotted Purple. (Butterfly photos courtesy of NJBC)
A world without butterflies is hard to fathom. There are around 17,500 species worldwide in a rainbow of iridescent colors, and their annual appearance is almost synonymous with summer. They have a fascinating life cycle: egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. They’ve also been the muse of poetry and stories for centuries, and they’re part of many terrestrial ecosystems, both as a food source and as a pollinator.
“Butterflies may transport pollen farther than bees on average, due to not nesting and just traveling more widely. Long-distance pollination is important for plant species, so they don’t become inbred,” says Dr. Rachael Winfree, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. In her lab, Winfree and her team research changing biodiversity with a focus on the role of pollinators. When asked to comment on a paper she co-authored that addressed pollinator contributions to global crop yields (“Wild insects and honey bees are equally important to crop yields in a global analysis,” Global Ecology and Biogeography), Winfree says, “There weren’t any crops where Lepidoptera [the order that includes butterflies and moths] made up a majority of visitors, but they did contribute a small number of visits to many different crops”; some of the those included coffee, buckwheat, blueberries, and watermelon.
Common Buckeye
Fortunately, local conservation groups outside of the research lab give citizens the chance to engage with butterflies. In the early 1990s, biologist and author Jeffrey Glassberg founded the North American Butterfly Association (NABA), and Wander has been with the New Jersey chapter — one of 24 across 14 states — ever since. Monthly in-person meetings of the New Jersey Butterfly Club are at the Morris County Library, and members keep busy with field trips, talks at garden clubs, and participation in annual Butterfly Counts. “Counts are very intense,” says Wander. “You count every single butterfly you see within a 15-mile diameter circle during a one-day period, which is just like an Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Our submitted reports were part of that national study published in Science; we’re very proud of that. Unfortunately, it’s pointing out a sad fact of life, but it’s important to know what’s happening.” During field trips, participants use close-focus binoculars like the Pentax Papilio to see butterflies at close range, and many take photos. In addition, two “Recent Sightings” pages (under the “Butterfly” tab at their website, njbutterflies.org) allow residents to report sightings that include date and location.
Though the club is a rewarding community, Wander admits that a big challenge is attracting younger members. “It’s very hard to pull younger people away from screens, and many kids don’t have an interest in the natural world. It’s a failure of our educational system that there’s virtually no nature education. And by the time they’re teenagers, it’s almost too late. We’ve given programs at schools and are happy to do it.” In order to enjoy butterflies as a lifelong hobby, Wander says that “you really have to — no pun intended — get bitten by the nature bug!”
In central New Jersey, staff and even visitors to The Watershed Institute in Pennington take to the surrounding fields with nets in search of butterflies as well, intending to help populate the Kate Gorrie Butterfly House. The popular outdoor structure, free and open to the public from mid-June to early October (during Watershed Center hours of operation), launched in 2000 and is an annual sanctuary for the butterflies brought there, seen in various stages of their lifecycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and fully formed insect. Sometimes Black Swallowtail Caterpillars (the state butterfly) are even transplanted from the parsley at Chickadee Creek Farm, an organic operation located on the reserve. “We have good neighbors around here,” says Alison Novobilsky, a Watershed Institute educator and naturalist. As a result, the Butterfly House is nearly always populated with butterflies from the reserve itself.
“Our Butterfly House is made up of host plants, which are what butterflies lay their eggs on for caterpillars to eat, and nectar plants, which provide food for fully-emerged butterflies throughout the season,” says Novobilsky. One of her favorite things is to educate the public on these plants, in hopes that they’ll shop at nurseries and bring butterflies to their own garden. “And the same summer, you can have them visiting. You’re supporting them immediately.”
You’ll never find an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in the Butterfly House (their host plants are trees), or a Mourning Cloak, since their caterpillars also feed off trees. But Black Swallowtails and Pearl Crescents are in residence annually, as well as Monarchs, which “are like the poster child of butterflies,” says Novobilsky. The Watershed Institute has partnered with Monarch Watch for over 20 years, tagging the well-known butterflies with the help of local school groups, corporate volunteers, and other adult programs. In the fall, the Monarchs living in southern Canada and the northeastern U.S. will migrate south, headed to mountainous forests in central Mexico — a journey totaling somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 miles. While the first non-migrating generations have an average lifespan of only two to six weeks, this last set will live up to an amazing eight or nine months. Overall, says Novobilsky, “Monarchs are speaking up for the other butterflies — they’ve all lost habitat due to people using too many pesticides and not planting native.”
Watershed Institute educator and naturalist Alison Novobilsky engages the public at a butterfly festival. (Photos courtesy of The Watershed Institute)
Weekly Thursday morning Butterfly House tours begin June 26, and the Institute’s annual Butterfly Festival is the first Saturday in August. But in the meantime, Novobilsky encourages homeowners to reference the “Host Plants List” document located at thewatershed.org/butterfly-house, which provides a list of butterfly-to-host and nectar plant matches. Those without gardening space shouldn’t be deterred, she points out: “Even if you have plants in patio pots, you can bring the butterflies!”
Before making a purchase, however, ask how the plant was grown, cautions Wander: “Many growers inoculate their plants with a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. These are systemic and infiltrate the entire plant from root to pollen and nectar. Any caterpillar that eats the leaves can possibly die; any butterfly that drinks the nectar may not be killed outright, but it has a neurological effect on the insect.”
Of course, this also translates to homeowners cutting out pesticide use on their own property so that the butterflies aren’t poisoned. In an episode from The joe gardener Show podcast from February 2024, “How Pesticide Regulations Fail Pollinators,” pollinator conservation specialist Emily May shares that “Home and garden use represents upwards of 25 percent of all insecticide use in the United States, so it is a really big sector and a place where we can make a big difference. Because a lot of that use is going in for aesthetic reasons, and not for economic reasons, like it is in agriculture. It’s not for a bottom line, it’s just to make a space look a little prettier.” May works for the Xerces Society, a nonprofit founded in 1971 and named after the Xerces Blue, the first American butterfly known to go extinct due to urban development. Multiple resources can be found on their website, xerces.org, including more details on the harmful impact of pesticides and tips for ecological pest management.
Purple Coneflower
In the podcast episode, May also shared some alarming information regarding agricultural pesticide use: In corn treated with neonicotinoids, about 2 to 3 percent of the active ingredient ends up in the plant, and more than 90 percent ends up elsewhere in the environment, including soil, air, water, and plants. Wildflowers growing around crop fields take up neonics and express them in their pollen and nectar. She shares, “And there are other chemicals that are also used as seed treatments, like these new chemicals called the diamides,” which are “very highly toxic to Monarch butterflies.” Overall, commercial and private pesticide use has a compounding effect: Wander recalls reading about a pile of dead monarchs found in a private California yard, analyzed to have a minimum of seven or eight different pesticides in their systems. Foregoing home pesticide use may lighten the load of toxins enough to keep the Monarchs (and other butterflies) flying.
Plus, other lawn care approaches help. Since butterfly species overwinter under leaf beds as caterpillars and pupae, a slow approach to spring lawn cleanup allows those butterflies-in-process time to safely emerge. In addition, the No Mow May movement allows grass and wildflowers to grow and thereby create habitat and forage for early season pollinators when floral blooms can be less common.
On a broader scale, concerned citizens can support a local or national group to get involved. Current membership in NABA (naba.org) is $35 and New Jersey residents automatically become a member of the New Jersey Butterfly Club. Monthly giving to the Xerces Society starts at $5/month. Other sites to check out include pollinator-pathway.org and beecityusa.org (the latter with a focus on bee conservation, but any bee-friendly landscape is also friendly to butterflies). Or try using a citizen-reporting tool, like the one found at monarchmilkweedmapper.org. There’s often work to be done in HOA pesticide policies, and one can vote for government officials who will support initiatives that combat climate change.
In a world where influential people often don’t prioritize the planet and all of its creatures, it’s never been truer that, as Jane Goodall says, “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Wander notes, “The home gardener is able to help species that are still reasonably common from becoming less common. And that’s a critical assist that you can give.”
When thanked for her interview time and for the work she and her husband Wade have done for the Butterfly Club and for the environment, Wander replied, “We can’t not do it.”
Painted Lady on New York Ironweed
