Monarch butterflies are making their flight north after wintering in Mexico. Here's what to know about the fascinating, fragile traveler.

Michigan is bracing for an invasion of butterflies. They arrive every spring, more than 150 species of them fluttering around ...

Butterfly abundance in the continental United States has crashed some 22% in only 20 years across 554 species counted, an alarming new scientific study involving Michigan State University found.

Nick Haddad, a professor at Michigan State University and one of the co-authors of the study, says the findings are alarming. “We’ve lost a quarter of butterflies in the last 20 years,” he said.

“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end.

A kaleidoscope of orange-and-yellow monarch butterflies soon will return to Michigan as they finish their overwintering in Mexico and Central America and begin fluttering home to breed.

A study compiled data from more than 76,000 butterfly surveys across the continental U.S. The declines seen in the last 20 years alarmed researchers.

The number of butterflies in the contiguous United States declined by 22 percent this century, a collapse with potentially ...