How you can help save the monarch butterfly -- and the planet

Monarch butterflies are dying at an alarming rate around the world -- a looming extinction that could also put human life at risk. But we have just the thing to help save these insects, says author Mary Ellen Hannibal: citizen scientists. Learn how these grassroots volunteers are playing a crucial role in measuring and rescuing the monarch's dwindling population -- and how you could join their ranks to help protect nature. (You'll be in good company: Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist!)

Hi there.

I'm in the habit of saying
I would like it if butterflies could talk,

but I've been recently reconsidering that,

because we already have
a pretty loud world.

Can you imagine if butterflies
were yakking out there all over the place?

But I would like to ask butterflies
one question, which is,

what is the meaning of some of the stories
that we humans tell about them?

Because remarkably, all over the world,
cultures have really similar stories,

similar mythologies about butterflies
having to do with the human soul.

Some cultures tell us butterflies
are carrying the souls of children

who have died wrongly or too soon,

and other cultures
tell us that butterflies

are carrying the souls
of our ancestors among us.

This butterfly is called
a Kallima inachus.

On one side, it looks
like a beautiful butterfly,

and on the other side,
it looks like a leaf,

and it folds up like a leaf
to elude predators.

So now you see it, now you don't,

something hidden, something revealed.

Maybe we got our ideas about
the human soul from this butterfly.

So it's possible that butterflies
have some sort of outsized role

in our afterlife.

But in this life, in this world,
butterflies are in really serious trouble.

This is a moth.

Moths and butterflies are related.
Moths generally fly at night.

This is called "praedicta," because
Darwin predicted that it must exist.

So today, more than 60 species
of butterflies are endangered

around the world,

but even more than that,

insects are declining,
declining, declining.

In the last 50 years,

we've lost nearly 50 percent
of the total number of bodies of insects.

Now this is a disaster.

It could impact us in a more serious way
more quickly than climate change,

because butterflies don't do that much
in the ecosystem that we depend on,

but they do things for other creatures
that we do depend on,

and that's the same story
with all insect life.

Insect life is at the very foundation
of our life-support systems.

We can't lose these insects.

Biodiversity all over the globe
is in a vast decline.

Habitat loss, pesticides, herbicides
and impacts of climate change.

Habitat loss is very serious,

and that's where we really
have to get developing better,

more mindfully.

It's the worst of times,

we are kind of overloaded
with our problems.

It's also the best of times --
there's incredibly good news.

We have exactly what we need.

We have exactly the platform
to save nature.

It's called citizen science.

So citizen science is generally a term
used to mean people without a PhD

contributing to scientific research.

Sometimes, it's called community science,

which gets at the communal purpose
of citizen science,

which is to do something
for our commons together.

It's amateur science.

It's being turbocharged today
by vast computing power,

statistical analysis and the smartphone,

but it's an ancient practice
that people have always practiced.

It's amateur science.

Professional science
has its roots in amateur science.

Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist.

He had no advanced degree,
and he worked only for himself.

So someone showed Darwin
this Madagascar star orchid,

which as a spur that's 12 inches long,

and the spur is the part of a flower
that the nectar is in.

So this person showed this
to Darwin and said,

"This proves that evolution
does not come about in a natural way.

This flower proves that only God
can make these incredibly bizarre

and tricky-looking creatures on the earth,

because no insect
could possibly pollinate this.

God must reproduce it."

And Darwin said, "No, I'm sure
that there is an insect somewhere

with a proboscis long enough
to pollinate that star orchid."

And he was right.

This is a map of the monarch butterfly.

So, the monarch butterfly
has a different story

than that particular moth,

but reflects the same kind
of fundamental idea that Darwin had

called coevolution,

and coevolution is at the heart
of how nature works,

and it's also at the heart
of what's going wrong with nature today.

So over time, as the moth
developed a longer proboscis,

so the plant developed a longer spur.

Over millions of years,

the plant and the moth
developed a relationship

whereby they both make each other's
chances of existence better.

The monarch butterfly has a different kind
of coevolutionary relationship,

and today, it is at the heart
of what's going wrong

for the monarch butterfly.

So this is a map of
the monarch butterfly migration.

The monarch does this amazing thing,

and over the course of a year,

it goes over the entirety
of North America.

It does this in four or five generations.

The first generations
only live a couple of weeks.

They mate, they lay eggs and they die.

The next generation emerges as butterflies
and takes the next leg of the journey.

Nobody knows how they do it.

By the time the fifth generation comes
back around -- and that one lives longer,

they overwinter
in Mexico and California --

by the time it gets there,

those butterflies are going back
to where their ancestors came from,

but they've never been there before,

and nobody that they're immediately
related to has been there before either.

We don't know how they do it.

The reason we know
they do this kind of migration --

and we still have a lot
of unanswered questions

about the monarch migration --

is because of citizen science.

So for decades,
people have made observations

about monarch butterflies,
where and when they see them,

and they've contributed these observations
to platforms like Journey North.

This is a map of some observations
of butterflies given to Journey North.

And if you can see the dots are coded

by what time of year
those observations were made.

So these massive amounts of data
come into a place like Journey North,

and they can create a map
of this time of over a course of a year

of where monarchs go.

Also because of citizen science,

we understand that monarch butterfly
numbers are going down, down, down.

So in the 1980s, the overwintering
butterflies here in California,

there were four million counted.

Last year, 30,000.

(Audience gasps)

Four million to 30,000 since the 1980s.

The monarchs on the east coast
are doing a little better,

but they're also going down.

OK, so what are we going to do about it?

Well, very organically,
nobody really asking anybody to do it,

people all over the continent
are supporting monarch butterflies.

The heart of the problem
for monarchs is milkweed.

It's another coevolutionary relationship,
and here's the story.

Milkweed is toxic.

It has a poison in it that it evolved
to deter other insects from eating it,

but the monarch developed
a different kind of relationship,

a different strategy with the milkweed.

Not only does it tolerate the toxin,

the monarch actually sequesters
the toxin in its body,

thus becoming poisonous to its predators.

Monarch butterflies will only
lay their eggs on milkweed,

and monarch caterpillars
will only eat milkweed,

because they need that toxin to actually
create what they are as a species.

So people are planting milkweed
all over the country

where we have lost milkweed
due to habitat destruction,

pesticide use, herbicide use
and climate change impacts.

You can create a lot of butterfly habitat
and pollinator habitat on a windowsill.

You go to a native nursery in your area

and find out what's native
to where you live,

and you will bring
beautiful things to yourself.

Now, citizen science can do even more
than rescue monarch butterflies.

It has the capacity to scale

to the level necessary
that we need to mobilize to save nature.

And this is an example.

It's called City Nature Challenge,

and City Nature Challenge is a project
of the California Academy of Sciences

and the Los Angeles
Museum of Natural History.

So for four years, City Nature Challenge
has enjoined cities all over the globe

to participate in counting up
biodiversity in their cities.

We're up to, like,
a million observations of biodiversity

collected by people
around the globe this past April.

The winner this year was South Africa,
much to the chagrin of San Francisco.

(Laughter)

Look at them, they have
more biodiversity than we do.

It's kind of an interesting thing,
what is revealed when you start seeing

what are the natural resources
where you live,

because as we go forward, you want to live
where there's more biodiversity.

And by the way, citizen science
is a very good tool for social justice

and environmental justice goals,
for helping reach them.

You need to have data
and you need to show a picture,

you need to point to a cause

and then you need to have
the surgical strike

to help support whatever that problem is.

So City Nature Challenge, I think,
should get a commendation from the UN.

Has there ever been a global effort
on behalf of nature

undertaken in this coordinated manner?

It's amazing, it's fantastic

and it's really a pretty grassroots thing,

and we get very interesting information
about butterflies and other creatures

when we do these bioblitzes.

City Nature Challenge basically works
with a tool called iNaturalist,

and iNaturalist is your entry drug
to citizen science. (Laughs)

I suggest signing up for it
on a laptop or on a desktop,

and then you put the app on your phone.

With iNaturalist, you take a picture
of a bird, a bug, a snake, anything,

and an artificial intelligence function
and an expert vetting system

works to verify that observation.

The app gives the observation the date,
the time, the latitude and the longitude,

geolocates that observation.

That's the data, that's the science
of citizen science.

And then that data is shared,

and that sharing,
that is the soul of citizen science.

When we share data,

we can see much bigger pictures
of what's going on.

There's no way to see
that whole monarch migration

without sharing data
that's been collected over decades,

seeing the heart and soul
of how nature works

through citizen science.

This is a Xerces blue butterfly,

which went extinct when it lost
its habitat in Golden Gate Park.

It had a coevolutionary relationship
with an ant, and that's another story.

(Laughter)

I'll end by asking you,

please participate in citizen science
in some way, shape or form.

It is an amazingly positive thing.

It takes an army of people
to make it really work.

And I'll just add that I think butterflies

probably really do have
enough on their plate

without carrying around human souls.

(Laughter)

But there's a lot we don't know, right?

And what about all those stories?
What are those stories telling us?

Maybe we coevolved our souls
with butterflies?

Certainly, we are connected to butterflies
in deeper ways than we currently know,

and the mystery of the butterfly
will never be revealed

if we don't save them.

So, please join me
in helping to save nature now.

Thank you.

(Applause)