New Delhi, March 7 -- Butterflies in the United States are disappearing at an alarming rate, with a new study revealing a 22 per cent decline in their populations over the past two decades. Scientists warn that this dramatic loss signals an urgent need for conservation efforts to protect these essential pollinators from further decline.

The study found that out of 554 recorded butterfly species, two-thirds showed significant population declines. The research analysed records of 12.6 million individual butterflies and drew on over 76,000 surveys from 2,478 unique locations across 35 monitoring programmes between 2000 and 2020.

The findings, published in the journal Science, highlighted the widespread nature of the decline, with species-l...