The three butterflies were flying on three separate days the week before Christmas taking pollen from flowers in our front garden in Newlands.

The first butterfly was huge, one of the largest I have ever witnessed. Joan, my wife, thought at first it was a small bird until she saw it again up close. It was wearing a coat of many shades of brown and yellow in as many patterns. And I was filled with a sense of peace and yes, I will use, the word “awe”.

The following day another butterfly visited us and Joan recognised it as a Dragon butterfly, although I could not find any reference to such anywhere. I could identify with her description as it had a very bright red head with a jet black ring that stood out from its yellow wings.

The day after a third one came and this one was just plain yellow.

Since then I have not seen amy butterflies and over the last few years I have seen less and less.

I have tried to remember back to when I saw lots of butterflies here. I cannot but it seems a long time ago.

I did some research and found I was right. Butterflies are disappearing and it is a world wide phenomenon.

Researchers find that species are disappearing because of pollution, pesticides, and habitat loss.

On July 15^tth “Science” confirmed butterflies are vanishing.

In a reserve in Germany’s Bavaria region, for instance, a study early this year found that just 71 butterfly species survive where there were 117 in the 19th century. That’s a 40 percent decline. In the Netherlands and England’s Suffolk County, researchers have found that 25 to 42 percent of resident breeding species are extinct.

“There is evidence for similar declines,” writes Oxford University lepidopterist Jeremy A. Thomas, “in North America, Japan, and hotspots of butterfly endemism such as Brazil, South Africa, and Australia.” Charismatic species such as the Indo-Pacific birdwings, with their six-inch wingspan, are among the victims.

The main thing killing the butterflies, according to Thomas, is our continually intensifying use of the land, especially for agriculture. Adult butterflies are often generalists flitting from plant to plant, but their young typically depend on just one or two plant species for food and habitat. These native plant species are being shoved aside to make room for crops, plantations of exotic trees, suburban lawns, and urban development. The decline of milkweed in North America is the most notorious example. For monarch butterflies, the herbicide-induced loss of the plant that harbors their eggs and feeds their young has been a major factor in the population crash from a billion in 1990 to just 33 million today.

Unlike monarchs, about 80 percent of butterfly species are confined to narrow home ranges that can be as little as an acre, and they’re unlikely to migrate across even a half-mile of inhospitable ground to find another suitable habitat. So a neighborhood of meticulously maintained lawns, or a single highway, can be fatal for a species. Some butterfly species also have complex relationships with local ant species. The alcon blue butterfly is a classic example. Its caterpillar emits a chemical signal that tricks local ants into carrying it back to their nest, where it is safe from being jabbed by parasitic wasps. Inside the nest, it refines its signal to induce the ants to feed and tend it.

These kinds of complicated relationships are easily jeopardized by change. For instance, when farmers in Europe abandon the marginal hillside fields where they used to intermittently graze livestock, that land becomes scrubbier and less grassy. That’s good news for many large mammals and a factor in Europe’s current rewilding. But it’s bad news for the butterflies that depended on those grasslands. Thomas lists pollution, drainage schemes, and climate change among the other landscape-scale factors threatening butterflies.

It is, however, possible to restore butterfly populations with a little effort. By paying closer attention to the nuances of species ecology, protected areas in the United Kingdom have brought back four of six nationally threatened butterfly species. For example, the iconic large blue butterfly went extinct there in 1979, just about the time Thomas discovered that its life cycle requires it to feed on the grubs of a particular red ant species. By importing butterfly stock from Sweden and focusing on those red ants, conservationists have established a population of about 10,000 butterflies back on old haunts.

People can make that kind of difference for butterflies everywhere. The best way to start is by scaling back that big, useless green lawn.

SOURCE: http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/07/14/butterflies-are-vanishing-around-world

“Love is like a butterfly” sang Dolly Parton, and with love vanishing in our world so is the butterfly.

I am grateful I saw three butterflies come flying into my garden. I hope I see more. And before next Christmas.

And Joan and I wish all our readers a very happy New Year. With much love.