Butterflies 'all in trouble,' but could bounce back

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, California, I'm Janet Wilson. During wet winters in the desert, caterpillars find plenty of primroses, desert lavender and other plants to eat, and delicate painted lady butterflies flit across sandy washes and windshields. But as super-sized warehouses and ever more tract homes spring up, the painted ladies are in decline.

In fact, the U.S. lost one out of every five butterflies between the years 2000 and 2020, or 22% total, according to a distressing new study published in Science and funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, which examined 756,957 surveys by 35 different programs totaling over 12.6 million butterflies.

"It would be really nice to be able to say ... one group of butterflies is in trouble but everywhere else is fine. But no. They are all in trouble, everywhere," said Collin Edwards, an ecological modeler with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife and lead author on the paper, writes Paste BN's Elizabeth Weise.

The chief causes of the declines include habitat destruction, drier and hotter climate due to climate change and insecticide use, reports Sunshyne Lynch with the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin. Luckily butterflies can rebound quickly, if given adequate, safe habitat, writes Weise.

"A lot of endangered species, like killer whales or elephants, are long-lived and only have one offspring at a time, so it takes a long time for the population to grow," Edwards said. "But butterflies can lay hundreds of eggs and have two or three generations a year. So if you make it possible for not just one or two to survive but hundreds, they can rebound quickly."

Help on the way? Butterflies are one example of huge global species loss, with average wildlife populations down 73% since 1970, according to a 2024 World Wildlife Fund report. Help may be on the way. It took a second meeting, but a gathering of countries in Rome agreed late last week to generate $200 billion a year by 2030 to halt and begin to reverse destruction of the natural world.

The United Nations biodiversity talks broke down in October in Colombia, but led by negotiators from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, reached agreement this time, reports Reuters. Delegates heralded the agreement as a triumph for nature and for multilateralism in a year when the political landscape is increasingly fragmented and diplomatic frictions are growing.

"I come out of the meeting happy and optimistic," said Maria Angelica Ikeda, director of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department of Environment.

Timber! Two March 1 orders mandating “immediate expansion” of timber production on federal lands and cuts to imports were praised by logging groups and rural Oregon lawmakers, who called them "common sense" plans to increase harvests and add jobs, and who said the orders could help manage overstocked forests and reduce the threat of wildfire. But environmental groups blasted the orders, reports Zach Urness with the Salem Statesman Journal, saying they would expand clearcutting and degrade wildlife habitat, drinking water, recreation and forest health.

“This plan is just as reckless and ill-conceived," said John Persell, staff attorney for the environmental group Oregon Wild. "We’re not about to let this administration unravel ... hard-won protections without a fight."

Really big. Officials seeking to lift or circumvent freezes on Biden-era federal funding agreements are trying a variety of tactics. Supervisors from impoverished Imperial County, CA want a $1.3 billion loan for a new lithium production plant to be finalized, and $1.4 billion more for badly needed infrastructure - and they think they've got a good shot, after pressing their case with high-ranking White House and Dept. of Energy officials. Rather than calling lithium a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries, they told me they're stressing how domestic critical minerals and manufacturing jobs would be created under their 81-square mile industrial plan.

"This plan has something for all the interested parties, including ... the Trump administration," said Brian Mooney, a veteran national planning consultant who drafted Imperial County's Lithium Valley Specific Plan. "He likes big things, the president, so we fit in that element of kind of a signature project that has big ideas, big thoughts."

Waterways teamwork. In the Great Lakes region, a coalition of groups has teamed up to garner bipartisan Congressional support for a pair of bills that would allocate $500 million annually to help halt invasive carp, restore polluted stretches and otherwise help the huge waterways, reports Steve Howe for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Historically such funds have come through U.S. EPA, where the Trump administration has floated big cuts.

You win some, you lose some. The U.S. Supreme Court handed San Francisco a victory against Biden-era EPA officials on Tuesday, potentially making it tougher to enforce the landmark Clean Water Act by saying the federal agency, which Trump has promised to gut, needed to better document pollution flowing from the city's antiquated sewage systems into the Pacific Ocean. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump, sided with the three more liberal justices though, noting toilet paper floating in the water was pretty clear evidence.

Going, gone. From Channel Islands National Park off the California coast to Wisconsin's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, a federal site that does critical research on the Mississippi River basin and the Midwest, to the Daniel Boone National Forest in rolling eastern Kentucky, cuts of young rangers, foresters and visitor and research centers keep coming. They Army Corps of Engineers' Florida headquarters will have its lease cancelled in the middle of hurricane season, two years ahead of schedule. Far bigger layoffs are looming: A February executive order commanded federal agencies to "promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force," and those could occur as soon as next week.

Several fired officials and employees' unions have sued, though. A federal district court judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from its mass firing of probationary federal employees last week, saying the Office of Personnel Management “does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire or fire any employees, but its own," including at the National Park Service and Energy Department. The Trump administration informed federal departments on Tuesday that probationary worker firings are now up to the agencies themselves.

Read on for more, including how local food is turning up in Arizona school lunches. Some stories may require a subscription. If someone forwarded you this email and you'd like to receive Climate Point in your inbox once a week, sign up here.