Our report, State of the butterflies in the United States: a Roadmap for Butterfly Conservation in the 21st Century is out!  The report is based on our March 2025 publication in Science from our USGS-USFWS working group on the Status of Butterflies in the US.  A lot of interest in this story. Hear more in an interview on OPB’s Think Out Loud.  

Listen to a story about our work to recover Fender’s blue on the Xerces podcast, Bug Banter as well as a recent essay on our work on Xerces’ newsletter WINGS 

And take a look at our multi-authored study on the importance of on-the-ground actions to help our butterflies in Edwards, Schultz et al 2024 even in the context of climate change. Read more on the Applied Ecologists’ Blog

 

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Conservation Biology

 

Human-caused changes in the earth’s ecosystems are responsible for the decline and extinction of the world’s biological diversity. In the Conservation Biology Research Group, we study the ecology of at-risk species in response to key drivers: habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, habitat degradation, invasive species, alteration of ecosystem process, and global climate change.

Using a population-ecology lens, we use field and quantitative methods to address pivotal ecological questions. We seek to understand the relative contributions of individual, population and landscape-level processes to the population viability of endangered species as these processes interface with realistic conservation interventions. Our work largely uses at-risk butterflies in Pacific Northwest Prairies as a model system to address fundamental ecological questions while simultaneously tackling focal questions to guide on-the-ground practice.

We have upcoming opportunities

Please review this page if you are interested in working with our lab!