Citizen Science Salon is a partnership between Discover and SciStarter.Org.
In the past 40 years, butterfly populations have declined dramatically across the American West, both in cities and in the wilderness. Overall, butterflies are now declining at a rate of 1.6 percent each year. That’s what researchers using butterfly observations from citizen scientists and professional researchers found in a recent study. Their work, drawing from 72 locations across the western U.S. was published in the journal Science in March.
Meanwhile, other citizen science observations recently showed the western monarch butterfly population has fallen as much as 99 percent since the 1980s.
