Neck surgery in 2005 put Amy Ottilige’s life on hold. She was “bored,” until she noticed a monarch butterfly fluttering outside her window. The simple observation changed her life. Instead of just briefly stopping to smell the flowers, she came to appreciate the bugs’ life on them.

Once recovered and after some self-education, Ottilige embraced the importance of native plants and the pollinators they support. Since 2014, when she began “raising” butterflies, some 1,500 of the nectar-feeding insects have completed their metamorphosis in her yard, including 161 monarchs in 2023 and 28 swallowtails in 2024.

“I just started, and then I ended up having a whole width of my house as a pollinator garden,” Ottilige said. “I’ve raised all types of butterflies, but monarchs are my favorite.”

The Warwick Wildlife and Conservation Commission member is continually educating herself about pollinators and their needs, and has received her pollinator steward certification. She is a member of the Monarch Watch program, and she has made and distributed several pamphlets — “Pollinators & How We Can Help,” “What is Pollination?,” and “Your Pollinator Garden” — to educate the public about the importance of pollinators.

Anne Holst, who has been chair of the Wildlife and Conservation Commission for the past 15 years, noted it’s important to plant native flowers in your yard, or at least in a few pots.

“When surrounded by grassy lawns, pollinators move or die, but the presence of native plants sustains them,” Holst said. “We need bee lawns. People need to realize that if you don’t have pollinators, you’re not going to have food.”

ecoRI News spoke with both women about the importance of pollinators and their disturbing decline, and how pollinator pathways can help.

“People can learn the basics of working with their own gardens and yards to provide healthy environments for bees, butterflies, and birds, all creatures we need to ensure flowers, fruits, and vegetables can grow abundantly,” Holst said. “Bees are very limited in how far from the hive they can go unless there is a continuous path of plants that they can get pollen and nectar from.”

Most native bees have a range of no more than half a mile, so the goal of pollinator pathways are to connect properties that are no farther apart than that.

Ottilige noted that pollinator pathways — in backyards, on municipal property, or in a business park — don’t need to be intense, time-consuming, or expensive. She said they can be as small as a window box with a few native perennials.

“Do what you feel you can afford and handle. You can start with a simple, small window container,” Ottilige said. “If you have a large yard, you can have half as a meadow. It’s up to you how much you want to put into it, and it’s up to you to be able to sit back and have a cup of tea and watch all these beautiful things fly around.”

The women recommended not mowing your lawn every week and allow it to grow taller for two or three weeks before cutting; leaving some patches of your yard vegetation-free to provide habitat for native ground-nesting bees; and creating a mowing schedule around the life cycles of native plants, because wildflowers aren’t only beautiful in bloom, but they also provide important ecological services.

“We’re trying to educate people about the fact that the most unhealthy thing is what we call the monoculture lawn and everything that goes on it,” Holst said. “You’re just depriving pollinators of food.”

Pollination enables native plants in yards, parks, farms, orchards, and forests to reproduce. While imported European honeybees are the pollinators most often celebrated, there are some 4,000 bee species native to the United States, plus flies, moths, butterflies, and other insects, that also provide this service for free.

Pollinator populations, however, are in sharp decline, largely because of the overuse of pesticides, the relentless development of habitat, and the human-caused climate crisis. Monarch butterflies have declined by about 90% in the past few decades, according to the National Wildlife Federation. A 2017 study found a 75% decline in all flying insects in the past 28 years.

“In the long term, we’re putting a big dent in the evolution of life on the planet,” according to the researchers who authored last year’s study. “But also, in this century, what we’re doing to the tree of life will cause a lot of suffering for humanity.”

It should come as no surprise then that our massive footprint is stomping out insect life. According to a 2019 study, about half of the world’s insects are speeding down a path toward extinction that threatens the collapse of ecosystems. Insects are a food source for amphibians, birds, fish, reptiles, and some humans.

They are also pollinators, and humans need them.

Three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35% of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce. Some scientists have estimated that one out of every three bites of food we eat exists because of animal pollinators such as bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, and other insects, plus birds and bats.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered. Their rate of insect extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds, and reptiles. Total bug mass is decreasing by 2.5% annually, according to research.

“We’re not asking them to spend beaucoup money,” said Ottilige of encouraging people to help pollinators. “It’s whatever you feel like you want to do and try.”

Note: This story was originally published by ecoRI News in September 2024. It has been updated.