Do you remember butterflies ? I’m sure you do, those insects flying like walks a college student going out of a bar.

Still, there are magnificent. Within art, they express lightness, grace but also the ephemeral.

Well, there isn’t any more.

It’s been 6 months since I started my differentiated garden management, and in June, I started to see butterflies flutter over the flowers (ugly, wild flowers, of course).

And then it hit me, I hadn’t seen one in years. When I was a kid, we could see a lot of them early summer. Theses little white or coloured spot flying awkwardly, looking for who knows what, with determination. No place was still, wherever you were looking, butterflies would unceasingly modify the painting.

Let’s get back to present, June 2023, to this unique white butterfly in my garden.

A quick search tells me that in 2022, a study(fr) was published by the French Observatoire National de la Biodiversité, stating that more than 66% of day butterflies haven’t been seen in their endemic departments.

It’s not specifically related to climate change though, the main reason is the disparition of their natural habitats: plains and hedges. The industrialisation of agriculture in the last century increased the tendencies to open fields: removing hedges was a way to increase productivity. The second aspect is the increasing number of animal battery cages breeding, also increasing productivity and reducing the need for pastures.

From this, there is multiple observations:

• Am I old ?
• We are in giga trouble(fr)
• My kids won’t have any memory of butterflies in early summer

but

Let’s imagine a better world then.

We want a world where there is enough hedges and wild plains to butterflies (and other insects) to thrive. This means that either humans needs to take less space, or better yet, that humans start to share the space.

What can be achieved ?

First, change your aesthetic view on gardens. Even if you don’t own a garden, you can maybe start spreading the word and update municipality policies on public gardens. Wild can be beautiful, we need to work on this aesthetic. You can check the work of Gilles Clément on this, he is the creator of the Tiers Paysage (fr).

Then if you can, plant new hedges. It’s far more useful than giving money to “regrow a forest” somewhere and just abandon the seed. You can check this links done by Permaculture Design

Thirdly, maybe we can work on killing the societal status and proud to have a neat lawn. It’s silly, but it’s actually a big cultural and harmful view for every living creature.

Your home will be fucking more beautiful and enjoyable with a garden

Lastly, I guess to reduce the incentive of cage breeding, we can stop eating meat bred this way, or stop eating meat altogether. It would impact the landscape for sure. Food and ecology is a very well documented thing, here is an article from 2009 !