For many years, the modest stretch of forested land surrounding our office in Maryland has offered a refuge to wild animals whose habitat is shrinking around them. Year after year, our staff members excitedly share sightings of our wild neighbors: the mama fox who births kits in a den under our utility shed; the bees […]
Tag: butterflies
National Butterfly Center forced to close down after QAnon threats
The National Butterfly Center in Texas, which opposed US President Donald Trump’s border wall, has been forced to close indefinitely due to harassment from right-wing conspiracy theorists. According to HuffPost, the 100-acre nature preserve in Mission, Texas, has been involved in a legal battle with the former Trump administration and the non-profit We Build a […]
Petition: Protect Monarch Butterflies
Human actions are decimating our planet and making it harder for those who live on it to survive. One such being is the Monarch butterfly. These beautiful creatures are vital pollinators and help keep the ecosystem in balance. Monarch butterfly populations have been declining rapidly. While there were around 1.2 million in the 1990s, there […]
Wild Animals are Thriving in New York City Right Now
Wildlife in New York City has never been thriving, much to the surprise of those who live there and take care of the gardens. Adrian Benepe, who is now the president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, said, “I grew up in the parks. There were never red-tailed hawks or Peregrine falcons or bald eagles. You didn’t […]
Can we save the bees? Absolutely. Let’s start with the native species (commentary)
My name is Krystle Hickman. I’m a photographer, community scientist and public speaker based in Los Angeles, California. My photography revolves around three things: bees, the plants they visit and their ecosystems. As a community scientist I note behavior, times, dates and weather when out photographing bees and their flowers. Over many years, my notations […]
Insects are vanishing from our planet at an alarming rate. But there are ways to help them
Insects have been around for more than 400m years, their ancestors crawling from the oceans to colonise the land long before dinosaurs appeared. They have been enormously successful, evolving into a staggering diversity of more than 1m known species, with perhaps as many as another 4m yet to be described by science. There are more […]
Butterflies released in Finland contained parasitic wasps – with more wasps inside
When caterpillars of a beautiful butterfly were introduced on to the tiny island of Sottunga in the Åland archipelago, scientists hoped to study how the emerging butterflies would disperse across the landscape. But researchers did not realise that their introduction of the Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) led to the emergence of three other species on […]
The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’
Ihave been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This […]