New Red List of Butterflies & Burnet Moths: 55% extinct, threatened or extremely rare

The current Red List of Butterflies and Burnet Moths documents a worrying trend: almost every second one of the 207 species and subspecies occurring in Germany is now threatened with population decline or already extinct. A total of ten species are considered lost, while another 93 fall into one of the threat categories.

How do butterflies and burnet moths differ?

Butterflies are the classic butterflies that mostly fly during the day. They usually have slender bodies, large, often strikingly coloured wings and club-shaped antennae. This group includes familiar species such as the Brimstone, Swallowtail and the various blues.

Burnet moths (family Zygaenidae) also belong to the butterflies and moths, but they are not butterflies in the narrower sense. Taxonomically, they are part of the moths. Their often metallic sheen is striking, usually combined with red warning spots. Despite belonging to another moth group, many burnet moths are also active during the day.

Typical features of burnet moths also include:

• defensive substances containing hydrocyanic acid, which make them unpalatable to predators,
• thread-like or slightly thickened antennae, but without the club typical of butterflies.

In the Red List, butterflies and burnet moths are treated together because they often use the same habitats, are exposed to similar threats and are often recorded together in field research. Their shared decline makes clear how strongly conditions in open landscapes have changed.

Red List 2025: The figures at a glance

The new Red List of Butterflies and Burnet Moths assesses a total of 207 established species and subspecies in Germany—182 butterflies and 25 burnet moths. The result is alarming: 93 taxa (45%) are considered threatened with population decline, while others have already disappeared or are extremely rare.

• 10 taxa are extinct or missing (4.8%)—newly added: the marbled skipper (Muschampia lavatherae)
• 13 are Critically Endangered (6.3%)
• 51 are Endangered (24.6%)
• 27 are Vulnerable (13%)
• 2 taxa fall into the category threat of unknown extent (1%)
• 11 taxa were classified as extremely rare (5.3%)

Overall, this means that 114 species, or 55%, have disappeared, are threatened with population decline or are extremely rare.
21 butterflies and burnet moths (10%) are on the early warning list, while only 71 taxa (34.3%) are currently considered not threatened—about one third of the total fauna.

Since the previous Red List (2011), the situation for butterflies and burnet moths has worsened further: for 49 taxa (23.7%), the threat status has deteriorated. Only 29 taxa (14%) show improvements.

Although there are individual positive developments—for example for the great banded grayling or warmth-loving species such as the marbled fritillary and the southern small white—these are often based on a better data basis or climate-related range shifts, not on real, stable population recovery.

Long-term trend: Decline since 1900

The analysis of historical and current distribution data shows a clear long-term trend: many butterflies have lost large parts of their original range since the beginning of the 20th century. Species of nutrient-poor open habitats are particularly affected, including dry grasslands, wet meadows and bogs.

According to the Red List authors, the fact that some formerly common species now appear statistically as “increasing” is often an artefact of more intensive recording, not evidence of real population gains.

Short-term trend (2000–2022): Declines continue

For many species, trends remain negative even in more recent years, including within protected areas. Data from Butterfly Monitoring Germany (TMD) show sometimes clear declines even among formerly common species—a “silent shrinking” that is barely noticed in everyday life but has serious ecological consequences.

High international responsibility for ten species

Germany bears a special global responsibility for ten butterfly and burnet moth species or subspecies. These taxa either occur almost exclusively in Germany, or their remaining populations here are highly isolated and far away from other occurrences. If they are lost here, they would be impossible to save worldwide—no other country could secure their survival.

Many of these so-called responsibility species belong to highly specialized butterfly and moth groups such as skippers or burnet moths. Their ecological requirements are closely tied to nutrient-poor open habitats, dry grasslands or warm, exposed rocky and dry slopes. Exactly these habitats have declined massively in Central Europe over recent decades—because of land-use intensification, scrub encroachment and habitat loss. This makes Germany’s responsibility especially weighty.

Examples of species for which Germany has special global responsibility:

• Parnassius apollo vinningensis
  A subspecies found worldwide only in the Moselle Valley in Rhineland-Palatinate. It has been classified as Critically Endangered for the first time. Its survival depends on a few remaining steep slopes.
• Oberthür’s grizzled skipper (Pyrgus armoricanus)
  Endangered and now recorded in Germany only in a few warm-favoured regions. The populations in Germany are clearly isolated from western European populations.
• Eastern baton blue (Pseudophilotes vicrama)
  Now extinct or missing in Germany. The species had extremely small occurrences here, restricted to eastern Germany. Despite targeted searches, it has not been rediscovered—Germany was one of the westernmost parts of its range.
• Jordanita subsolana
  Status: threat of unknown extent. The species now occurs only in small, highly fragmented populations; a search in 2021 confirmed individual remnant populations.

Many of these species are characterized by tiny total ranges, extremely specialized habitat requirements and a low ability to disperse. Some are also considered relict populations, whose current distribution dates back to earlier climatic phases. Their disappearance would be not only a national loss, but a global loss of biological diversity.

Why butterflies and burnet moths are disappearing—key threats

The new Red List makes clear that Germany’s butterflies are coming under ever greater pressure. The decisive factor is the massive transformation of our landscape. What matters most is the profound change in the way our landscape is shaped. Above all, agricultural intensification hits many species hard—early and frequent mowing, fertilization and the loss of flower-rich meadows cause caterpillar food plants and nectar sources to disappear.

At the same time, nitrogen inputs from agriculture and traffic are driving species loss. Dry grasslands and species-rich meadows become dominated by grasses, while specialized butterflies and moths lose the foundations of their survival.

But the other end of the spectrum is also problematic: land abandonment and scrub encroachment cause formerly open dry slopes, heathlands and dry grasslands to become overgrown—precisely the habitats on which species such as Apollo butterflies, fritillaries and many burnet moths depend.

In forests, denser stands and the loss of open structures have negative effects. Species that need sunny edges, clearings or open woodland forms are finding suitable habitats increasingly rarely.

In addition, there are climate change and extreme weather events. Drought phases dry out caterpillar food plants; alpine and bog-dependent species lose their climatic refuges. Soil sealing, settlement pressure and pesticide use further worsen the situation.

The decline of butterflies and burnet moths is the result of many pressures acting at the same time. Only if landscapes become richer in structure, lower in nutrients and better connected again can this downward trend be slowed in the long term.

Measures to save butterflies and burnet moths

Protecting butterflies and burnet moths is not a long-term goal, but an urgent task, because targeted measures are long overdue. What is needed are fundamental changes in the way we use and shape landscapes.

A central lever is butterfly-friendly management of nutrient-poor meadows. Less mowing and consistently avoiding fertilization allow herbs and flowering plants to spread again, creating the basis for caterpillars and adult butterflies. Equally important is the preservation of open forests and structurally rich edges. Many species do not live in closed forest, but in transition zones that in many places have become overgrown or disappeared.

Reducing nitrogen and pesticide inputs also plays a key role. Both factors fundamentally change vegetation and deprive butterflies and moths of the basis for feeding and development.

In addition, protected areas must be better connected. Many butterflies are not very mobile and cannot recolonize isolated habitats by themselves. Flower-rich stepping stones, corridors and edge biotopes are therefore crucial for stabilizing populations over the long term.

And finally, what is needed is agriculture that creates habitats instead of destroying them—with extensively used meadows, flower strips, fallows and small-scale diversity. Only if agricultural landscapes regain structure and permeability will butterflies and burnet moths have a future in the long term.

Not an isolated case

The new Red List of Butterflies and Burnet Moths, published by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), is part of a series of sobering findings. It shows not only the status of a single species group, but also stands as an example of the broad loss of biological diversity. Similar results can be found among other insects, such as robber flies, and also outside Germany.

The Red List of Europe’s butterflies 2025 confirms that the declines of many butterflies are not a German problem. Across large parts of Europe, even formerly widespread species are coming under pressure, their populations are declining or collapsing completely at regional level.

These parallel developments show that these are not isolated exceptions, but systemic changes in our landscapes. The state of insect fauna is an early warning system that reveals where ecological limits are being exceeded.

The Red List is a benchmark for the state of our environment and an indication that the protection of individual species is inseparably linked to the question of how we will use, preserve and shape our landscapes in the future.

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Source

• Musche, M., Albrecht, M., & Becker, J. et al. (2025). Red List and complete species list of butterflies and burnet moths (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea et Zygaenidae) of Germany. Naturschutz und Biologische Vielfalt, 170(11), 94 pp.