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Hi there.

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

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but I've been recently reconsidering that,

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because we already have
a pretty loud world.

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

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

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

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

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

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Some cultures tell us butterflies
are carrying the souls of children

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who have died wrongly or too soon,

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and other cultures
tell us that butterflies

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are carrying the souls
of our ancestors among us.

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This butterfly is called
a Kallima inachus.

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On one side, it looks
like a beautiful butterfly,

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

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and it folds up like a leaf
to elude predators.

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

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something hidden, something revealed.

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

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

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in our afterlife.

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

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This is a moth.

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

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

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So today, more than 60 species
of butterflies are endangered

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around the world,

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but even more than that,

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insects are declining,
declining, declining.

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In the last 50 years,

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

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Now this is a disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

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We can't lose these insects.

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Biodiversity all over the globe
is in a vast decline.

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

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Habitat loss is very serious,

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

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more mindfully.

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It's the worst of times,

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we are kind of overloaded
with our problems.

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

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We have exactly what we need.

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We have exactly the platform
to save nature.

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It's called citizen science.

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

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contributing to scientific research.

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Sometimes, it's called community science,

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which gets at the communal purpose
of citizen science,

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which is to do something
for our commons together.

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It's amateur science.

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It's being turbocharged today
by vast computing power,

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statistical analysis, and the smartphone,

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

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It's amateur science.

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Professional science
has its roots in amateur science.

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Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist.

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

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So someone showed Darwin
this Madagascar star orchid,

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which as a spur that's 12 inches long,

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

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So this person showed this
to Darwin and said,

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

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This flower proves that only God
can make these incredibly bizarre

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and tricky-looking creatures on the earth,

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because no insect
could possibly pollinate this.

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God must reproduce it."

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

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

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And he was right.

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This is a map of the monarch butterfly.

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So, the monarch butterfly
has a different story

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than that particular moth,

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but reflects the same kind
of fundamental idea that Darwin had

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called coevolution,

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and coevolution is at the heart
of how nature works,

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

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

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so the plant developed a longer spur.

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Over millions of years,

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the plant and the moth
developed a relationship

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

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The monarch butterfly has a different kind
of coevolutionary relationship,

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

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for the monarch butterfly.

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So this is a map of
the monarch butterfly migration.

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The monarch does this amazing thing,

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and over the course of a year,

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it goes over the entirety
of North America.

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It does this in four or five generations.

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The first generations
only live a couple of weeks.

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They mate, they lay eggs, and they die.

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

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Nobody knows how they do it.

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

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they overwinter
in Mexico and California --

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by the time it gets there,

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

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but they've never been there before,

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

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We don't know how they do it.

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

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and we still have a lot
of unanswered questions

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about the monarch migration --

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is because of citizen science.

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So for decades,
people have made observations

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about monarch butterflies,
where and when they see them,

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

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

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And if you can see the dots are coded

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by what time of year
those observations were made.

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

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

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of where monarchs go.

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Also because of citizen science,

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

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

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there were four million counted.

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Last year, 30,000.

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(Audience gasps)

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Four million to 30,000 since the 1980s.

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

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but they're also going down.

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

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

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people all over the continent
are supporting monarch butterflies.

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The heart of the problem
for monarchs is milkweed.

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

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Milkweed is toxic.

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

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but the monarch developed
a different kind of relationship,

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a different strategy with the milkweed.

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Not only does it tolerate the toxin,

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the monarch actually sequesters
the toxin in its body,

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thus becoming poisonous to its predators.

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Monarch butterflies will only
lay their eggs on milkweed,

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and monarch caterpillars
will only eat milkweed,

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

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So people are planting milkweed
all over the country

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where we have lost milkweed
due to habitat destruction,

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pesticide use, herbicide use
and climate change impacts.

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

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You go to a native nursery in your area

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

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and you will bring
beautiful things to yourself.

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

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It has the capacity to scale

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

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And this is an example.

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It's called City Nature Challenge,

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

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and the Los Angeles
Museum of Natural History.

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

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to participate in counting up
biodiversity in their cities.

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

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collected by people
around the globe this past April.

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

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(Laughter)

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

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

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what are the natural resources
where you live,

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

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

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and environmental justice goals,
for helping reach them.

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

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you need to point to a cause,

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and then you need to have
the surgical strike

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to help support whatever that problem is.

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

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Has there ever been a global effort
on behalf of nature

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undertaken in this coordinated manner?

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It's amazing, it's fantastic,

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and it's really a pretty grassroots thing,

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and we get very interesting information
about butterflies and other creatures

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when we do these bioblitzes.

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City Nature Challenge basically works
with a tool called iNaturalist,

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

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

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and then you put the app on your phone.

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

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and an artificial intelligence function
and an expert vetting system

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works to verify that observation.

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

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geolocates that observation.

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

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And then that data is shared,

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

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When we share data,

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

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There's no way to see
that whole monarch migration

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without sharing data
that's been collected over decades,

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seeing the heart and soul
of how nature works

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through citizen science.

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This is a Xerces blue butterfly,

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

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

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(Laughter)

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I'll end by asking you,

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

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It is an amazingly positive thing.

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

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And I'll just add that I think butterflies

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probably really do have
enough on their plate

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without carrying around human souls.

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(Laughter)

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

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

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Maybe we coevolved our souls
with butterflies?

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

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and the mystery of the butterfly
will never be revealed

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if we don't save them.

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

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Thank you.

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(Applause)