Species Focus Area
Bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and some birds and bats carry the reproduction of wild plants and much of our food supply.
Pollinator decline is one of the few conservation problems ordinary households can measurably improve on their own property within a single season.
Common threats
How people can help
These ten are not a scientific ranking. They were selected for conservation urgency, teaching value, and regional relevance, and each one has a complete, sourced profile.
Vulnerable (IUCN) / Proposed Threatened (ESA)
Danaus plexippus
A butterfly whose entire eastern population funnels through Texas twice a year on a multi-generation journey between Canada and central Mexico.
Critically Endangered (IUCN) / Endangered (ESA)
Bombus affinis
The first bumble bee protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, gone from about 87 percent of its historic range in roughly two decades.
Vulnerable (IUCN); ESA listing under review
Bombus occidentalis
Once among the most common bumble bees in the western United States, now largely absent from the Pacific coast portion of its range.
Critically Endangered (IUCN) / Endangered (ESA)
Bombus franklini
A bumble bee with one of the smallest known ranges of any bee, not confirmed alive since 2006 despite intensive searching.
Endangered (ESA)
Plebejus melissa samuelis
A small blue butterfly that depends entirely on wild blue lupine growing in fire-maintained pine barrens and oak savanna.
Endangered (ESA)
Cyclargus thomasi bethunebakeri
Once common along the entire South Florida coast, now reduced to a few remote islands in the Florida Keys.
Critically Endangered (IUCN) / Endangered (ESA)
Oarisma poweshiek
A small prairie butterfly that went from locally abundant to a handful of surviving sites in about a decade, for reasons still not fully understood.
Threatened (ESA, eastern subspecies)
Argynnis idalia
A large prairie butterfly, once found across the eastern grasslands, now essentially gone east of the Mississippi except for a single military installation.
Near Threatened (IUCN)
Selasphorus rufus
A hummingbird weighing about as much as a nickel that migrates from Alaska to Mexico each year, and has lost a large share of its population since the 1970s.
Endangered (IUCN and ESA)
Leptonycteris nivalis
A migratory nectar-feeding bat that pollinates agaves along a corridor from central Mexico to the mountains of west Texas.