Conservationists in Taiwan are working to save the great purple emperor butterfly as their numbers drop dramatically.
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00:00Once common across northern Taiwan, the Great Purple Emperor Butterfly is now a rare sighting.
00:09The butterfly's numbers have dropped sharply over the decades.
00:12Faced with the insect's potential extinction, conservationists have been working to monitor
00:17the vulnerable butterfly species.
00:18But its natural habitat has made those efforts challenging.
00:30Taiwan is often called the butterfly kingdom, as the country is home to over 400 butterfly
00:41species.
00:42But in the 1980s, commercial collection of butterflies became a lucrative business in
00:47the country.
00:48Collectors would trade packaged specimens and merchandise made of wing clippings, fueling
00:53an international trade that would decimate the populations of various butterfly species,
00:58including the Great Purple Emperor, coveted for its rare color.
01:19What's more, human development and urbanization in northern Taiwan has further harmed the
01:23species, with large-scale habitat destruction.
01:41The Great Purple Emperor only lays eggs on hackberry trees, meaning their habitats are
01:46extremely limited.
01:48And as climate change and rising temperatures push the species to move to higher altitudes
01:52for cooler breeding grounds, conservationists worry that the butterflies might not find
01:56hackberry trees there.
02:19It's not just Taiwan's Great Purple Emperor that's facing an existential threat.
02:24Results of the UK's annual Big Butterfly Count have shown the lowest numbers in the survey's
02:2814-year history, which scientists say signals a larger environmental crisis.
02:33We've got about 20,000 species of insects in the UK.
02:37The butterflies are just the largest, most visible, most easily identified ones.
02:41So when their populations are crashing, that should really be a big wake-up call that something
02:46is seriously wrong with the state of our environment.
02:49In response to the troubling survey results, conservationists in the UK have called on
02:53the government to ban pesticides that are harmful to local butterfly species.
02:58And here in Taiwan, conservationists are working to keep a close eye on wild populations of
03:03the Great Purple Emperor, while also introducing educational initiatives in schools about the
03:08importance of ecological preservation.
03:11The hope is that these conservation efforts can restore the Great Purple Emperor population
03:16and help the species return to its former glory in the butterfly kingdom.
03:21Scott Huang and Wesley Lewis for Taiwan Plus.