The New Mexico desert used to be humming a soundtrack. Crickets chirped from grasses by the roadside. Grasshoppers sprang drunkenly through the heat. Monarch butterflies floated above fields in flashes of orange and black. Insects splattered windshields after long drives were once so common.
Now, scientists say, the silence itself has become obvious.
Across the state — and increasingly around the globe — insects are vanishing at an alarming rate. These tiny creatures are becoming victims of intensifying heat, prolonged drought, pesticide use, and disappearing habitat. Researchers once described the declines as isolated. But they now recognize the declines as part of a broader ecological crisis with consequences far beyond the bugs themselves.
Insects as tiny labor force
The disappearance is not only about artistry. It is about the biological machinery that sustains life. “Insects are the backbone of ecosystems,” said David Lightfoot, a research associate professor in biology at the University of New Mexico. He studied grasshopper populations for over three decades. Scientists say that without insects, food webs begin to break down, pollination weakens, and birds disappear. Without them, soil health deteriorates, and fish populations suffer. The entire ecosystem loses the tiny labor force that quietly keeps it functioning.
Worldwide, the decline has become so obvious. Entomologists now describe their vanishing population as a form of ecological erosion — incremental, relentless, and unnoticeable until collapse becomes visible. “What people are reporting globally is, in fact, happening right here in New Mexico,” Lightfoot said. “More than half of the species we’re evaluating are threatened with extinction, endangered, or critically endangered based on recent declines.”
That finding unsettled researchers because New Mexico has no sprawling urban development usually associated with ecological destruction elsewhere. The state still contains vast swathes of open land. But across the state, the insects are vanishing. Scientists frame the causes as cumulative: temperatures are getting hotter, water supplies are shrinking, herbicides, pesticides, invasive species, and habitat fragmentation combine into what one researcher called “death by a thousand cuts.”
The case of butterflies
The losses are not occurring to obscure or rarely seen species. The Monarch butterfly — perhaps North America’s most recognizable insect — has suffered one of the sharpest collapses.
Kevin Burls, an endangered species conservation biologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, estimates that western Monarch populations are now “99 percent smaller than populations in the 1980s.” “We’re losing common things in large numbers where they’re having cascading effects in other animal communities,” said Burls. “If you talk to any songbird person in the West,” he added, “they’ll tell you the decline in insects is responsible for fewer birds.”
Bird researchers across North America have increasingly connected diminishing bird populations to dwindling insect abundance. Many migratory birds rely almost entirely on insects to feed their hatchlings. That being said, fewer insects mean fewer chicks survive.
The consequences ripple throughout in ways most people never see. Approximately three-fourths of wild flowering plants rely on insects for reproduction. About a third of food crops also rely on pollinators. These tiny laborers decompose waste, recycle nutrients, and naturally act as pesticides. Scientists say that ecosystems begin losing resilience without insects.
But because insects are small, their population decline unfolds invisibly. “There’s no headline when you lose beetles,” Burls remarked. “People notice when forests burn. They don’t notice when ecosystems slowly stop functioning.”
The case of butterflies is different because they are extensively monitored. Butterflies have become one of the clearest signs of ecological stress. A 2025 study analyzing more than 76,000 butterfly surveys found that butterfly populations declined 22 percent between 2000 and 2020. Shrinking populations outnumbered growing populations by 13 to 1.
The sharpest declines occurred in the American Southwest — including New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma. The overall butterfly abundance in these regions dropped by nearly 4 in 10.
No longer theoretical
The changes are no longer theoretical. Simon Doneski, a doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico who studies butterflies, said this year’s extreme heat and dry winter spells triggered something unprecedented: butterflies came out from their chrysalises weeks earlier than normal. He recorded nearly two dozen species appearing about a month ahead of established patterns. “We’re in uncharted territory,” Doneski said. “This hasn’t happened in at least 100 years.”
Early emergence of butterflies might sound harmless. Scientists, however, say it is not. Butterflies rely on precise timing between temperature, flowering plants, and caterpillar food sources. If butterflies emerge before flowers bloom, they will have no food. Caterpillars born too early may face deadly summer heat before they reach maturity.
Climate change, according to a study, is causing havoc to environmental calendars that evolved over thousands of years. Increasing temperatures are becoming dangerous to insects’ life cycles: eggs dry out, vegetation withers, streams disappear, and heat waves push fragile species beyond survival thresholds.
Growing tensions
The crisis has also revealed growing tensions between agriculture, public health, and conservation policy. Pesticides and herbicides are still widely used on farms, in suburbs, and on public lands, even as studies associate them with pollinator declines. Experts argue that there is a lack of political urgency to protect insects because they have few defenders compared with industries backed by powerful lobbying groups. “Involvement with local politics and state legislatures is hugely important,” Burls said. “Other interests have really good lobby support, lots of advocates, but insects don’t always have that — so every voice counts.”
New Mexico lawmakers overhauled the state Department of Wildlife. Scientists say the move could help improve conservation efforts. But they warn that funding for insect monitoring and protection remains inadequate. “Before we protect them, we have to learn about them,” Lightfoot said.
Meanwhile, ordinary people still have meaningful ways to help to stave off the crisis. Residents can plant native pollinator species, reduce pesticide use, and preserve habitat in gardens and neighborhoods. Many researchers, however, warn that individual actions alone cannot reverse declines occurring at a global scale. The bigger challenge, they say, is whether society can recognize the ecological worth of forgotten species.
The crisis is not only about butterflies or crickets or grasshoppers. It is about the stability of ecosystems humans depend on but often overlook — until the silence becomes difficult to ignore.
