Declaration Issued to Halt UK Insect Declines as Evidence Mounts of National Crisis - Buglife

Bristol, 12 September 2025. Yesterday, during the Wild Summit event, the UK’s leading insect conservation charities supported by organisations, institutions, and community representatives issued a united Declaration on UK Insect Declines, calling for urgent, coordinated action to address the steep and ongoing losses in the United Kingdom’s insect populations.

The declaration, proposed by Buglife, Butterfly Conservation and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, and supported by over 50 signatories, urges governments, land managers, businesses, and the public to take immediate steps to reverse declines in insect abundance, diversity, and distribution. It calls for widespread restoration of insect-rich habitats, bold reductions in pesticide and pollutant use, stronger legal protections, and major investment in research, monitoring, and public engagement.

“Reversing insect decline is essential, not optional,” the declaration states, “for halting nature loss and achieving the UK’s climate and biodiversity goals.”

Insects: Critical to Life, Rapidly Declining

Insects are essential to ecosystem functioning they pollinate crops and wild plants, recycle nutrients, maintain healthy soils, control pests, and form the base of the food web for birds, bats, fish, and other wildlife. However, a growing body of scientific evidence shows the UK’s insects are in serious trouble:

Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count results from this year revealed butterflies were only seen in average numbers, despite the near perfect weather conditions for the insects. The sunniest spring and hottest summer on record did little to reverse the long-term decline for butterflies and the 15-year Big Butterfly Count trends show that more than twice as many widespread species have declined significantly than have increased.