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fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

      Writing in the Strange Behaviors column on takepart [takepart.com], Richard Conniff reviews a paper that appeared in Science [sciencemag.org] this week (paywalled). The paper's summary on Science says:

Butterflies are better documented and monitored worldwide than any other nonpest taxon of insects. In the United Kingdom alone, volunteer recorders have sampled more than 750,000 km of repeat transects since 1976, equivalent to walking to the Moon and back counting butterflies. Such programs are revealing regional extinctions and population declines that began before 1900. In a recent study, Habel et al. report a similar story based on inventories of butterflies and burnet moths since 1840 in a protected area in Bavaria, Germany. The results reveal severe species losses: Scarce, specialized butterflies have largely disappeared, leaving ecosystems dominated by common generalist ones. Similar trends are seen across Europe and beyond, with protected areas failing to conserve many species for which they were once famed. [Citation numbers removed, see the link above if you want them]

      In his article, Conniff says:

[Oxford University lepidopterist Jeremy A.] Thomas acknowledges that the decline in butterflies is not exceptional. Bumblebees, dragonflies, moths, and ladybirds (or ladybugs, in this country) may be even worse off because of environmental damage inflicted by humans. Those insect groups really matter in the sense that they have ecological value for pollination and predator control. Butterflies, on the other hand, are mostly just pretty to look at.

      But their very uselessness, their pointless beauty, is the one thing that has made butterflies seem so important. I've always figured William Blake had butterflies in mind when he wrote that beautiful little poem: "He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy / But he who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity's sun rise."

      The idea that we are destroying butterflies -- not just individual butterflies but vast swaths of species -- resonates ominously.

      [...]

      People clearly care about butterflies. Thomas notes that volunteers in Britain have walked about 466,000 miles monitoring butterfly populations over the past 40 years. That's like walking to the moon and back counting butterflies.

      Time for the rest of us to take the first step.

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