The Xerces Society

So I recommend that people look up the source of the information and go to a curated source.

I love the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation for information about pollinators and plants.

I really like New Jersey Endangered and Non-Game Species and program for information about wildlife and there will also sometimes be information about plants.

I like Missouri Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

So let's start with the basics of what is a Bee City.

BCD USA is a nationally recognized program by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

Their focus is on pollinator protection, especially native bees.

It's not just a title.

that you then, like, raise at home, like in your house or in your backyard or something, and then set them free once they have grown up.

And I, I know this is out of a place of love that people do this, 'cause they're like, "Well, I love monarch butterflies, and they're not doing so good, so I'm gonna help- Hmm ... by raising some monarch butterflies and setting them free." Now, the Xerces Society, which is a huge international conservation organization specifically for insects, I know people that do really great work with the Xerces Society.

But the Xerces Society's joint statement regarding captive breeding and releasing of monarchs points out some of their biggest concerns with these commercially bred and often mass-reared butterflies.

They, they mention that some people do this for weddings.

Oh.

Mm-hmm

... for scientists.

So the Xerces Society advises that any captive rearing of monarch butterflies should be done on a very small scale.

Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society, where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals.

If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org slash give.

Hi, I'm Matthew Shepard in Portland, Oregon.

And in May of this year, 1.5 million acres of land were designated as critical habitat, the largest area of critical habitat ever declared for an insect.

To tell the story of how this bumblebee went from unknown to icon are two people who played a central role in the years-long effort, Serena Jepson and Rich Hatfield.

Serena is the Endangered Species Program Director here at Xerces and has worked on the protection of many different invertebrate species including bees, butterflies, tiger beetles, fireflies and freshwater mussels.

Serena co-founded the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Bumblebee Specialist Group, an international network of scientists that evaluates the extinction risk of bumblebees worldwide.

Rich also works at Xerces, where he is a senior conservation biologist on our endangered species team and our bumblebee conservation lead, which means he manages all aspects of our work on bumblebees.

Um, if you're really interested, Calscape has a cool feature where you can search by, uh, species of butterflies and identify what would be host plants.

Uh, you can also, if you want just, like, a list of here are some species that are preferred by bees and butterflies, I recommend checking out resources from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and that's spelled with an X, so X-E-R-C-E-S.

C- Yeah.

I- It's pretty familiar.

He works to conserve pollinators and rangelands in the central US, and conducts research on monarch butterfly migration and overwintering in the southeastern US.

Kevin is a Xerces Society endangered species conservation biologist based in northern Nevada.

His work focuses on protecting the hundreds of butterfly species that inhabit deserts, forests, and grasslands across the western United States.

Welcome back to Bug Banter, Ray and Kevin.

In the introduction, Rachel noted that a fifth of our butterflies disappeared over a 20-year period, and used the phrase, "Perhaps more alarming." Should we be alarmed? Does it matter that we have fewer butterflies?

Yeah, I think it does.

Some of the work that Rachel is referencing comes from a 2025 publication in the journal Science, and the Xerces Society published a report following up on that publication, and included a lot more information as well.

And I think one of the things that I like to talk to people about with that report is that, species-specific results aside, what we see are declines in common widespread species.