00:00 The butterfly house of London Zoo is full of beautiful specimens.
00:06 Here, in this replica of their natural habitat, they can thrive, away from predators and other threats.
00:12 But in the wild, life is more difficult, and butterflies are becoming harder to find.
00:17 That's certainly what Amy Walkden and Emma Grice are finding in their rural village of Abbots Kerswell.
00:23 [Children playing]
00:30 After school, Amy and Emma often take their children and school friend butterfly spotting.
00:35 It's fun to go on a nature walk, but they're also doing it to provide data for the charity Butterfly Conservation.
00:41 Having a yearly record of what is around and what isn't around, I think is really good scientific data
00:47 to indicate changes such as global warming and habitat destruction. Butterflies are sensitive indicators of what's going on, so it's really important.
00:57 Monitoring takes place year-round, but the charity is particularly encouraging people to take part in its Big Butterfly Count survey until August 6th,
01:06 entering information about how many they spot in its free app.
01:10 Data from volunteers helped produce Butterfly Conservation's latest report.
01:14 Lead author Richard Fox says its findings are alarming.
01:17 80% of species are in decline, and butterflies are no longer present on average in nearly half the areas they were found 50 years ago.
01:25 The major causes of the decline are what we humans have done to the landscape in the UK over the past 50, 60, 70 years.
01:35 And so that's things like the intensification of agriculture, which is not just chemicals that go into that, pesticides and fertilisers,
01:45 but also changes to the landscape, so removing hedgerows, maximising the space for growing crops and pushing nature out of farmland.
01:55 Back at home, the Walkdens are also raising caterpillars in their garden. Young Robin already has a good idea of how important this is.
02:03 If we don't have any butterflies and all the buzzy things, then the things that eat butterflies won't have any food,
02:10 and the things that eat them, well, basically just the food chain, and part of the food chain is the things that we eat.
02:16 And if there's none of them, then we will starve and we won't really be able to survive, will we?
02:24 The decline in butterflies and other insects isn't limited to Britain.
02:28 With a 2020 study in the journal Biological Conservation estimating insect numbers worldwide have dropped by 5 to 10 per cent in the past 150 years.
02:38 The UK government now includes butterfly numbers as an official indicator of biodiversity.
02:43 The hope is that with proper monitoring and efforts to protect threatened species, the decline in butterfly numbers could begin to reverse.
02:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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