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The Disappearance of Butterflies
Josef H. Reichholf
Translated by Gwen Clayton
polity
Originally published in German as Schmetterlinge: Warum sie verschwinden and was das für uns bedeutet by Joseh H. Reichholf © 2018 Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München
This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association).
Excerpt from Vergängliche Spuren by Miki Sakamoto reproduced with permission of Verlag Kessel. © Verlag Kessel, Remagen 2014. All rights reserved by and controlled through Verlag Kessel. www.forestrybooks.com
Excerpt from ‘Blauer Schmetterling’, from: Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke in 20 Bänden. Herausgegeben von Volker Michels. Band 10: Die Gedichte © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2002. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3981-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reichholf, Josef, author.
Title: The disappearance of butterflies / Josef H. Reichholf ; translated by Gwen Clayton. Other titles: Schmetterlinge. English
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2020] | Originally published in German as Schmetterlinge : Warum sie verschwinden and was das fur uns bedeutet by Joseh H. Reichholf 2018 Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munchen. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020012872 (print) | LCCN 2020012873 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509539819 (epub) | ISBN 9781509539796 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509539796q(hardback) | ISBN 9781509539819q(epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Butterflies. | Butterflies--Ecology. | Butterflies--Conservation.
Classification: LCC QL543 (ebook) | LCC QL543 .R4513 2020 (print) | DDC 595.78/9--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012872 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012873
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Foreword
Most people in the British Isles and North America – as well as on the European mainland – are by now well aware that many species of wildlife are declining and even disappearing. Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are prominent among them. The author of this authoritative book, Dr Josef Reichholf, became concerned about the decline of many species in his native Germany during his doctoral and postdoctoral research at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich on moths in both rural and urban areas around that city in the 1970s and 1980s. He became aware of the staggering speed of change and its extent, mainly due to the intensification of agriculture. The subject of his doctoral research was a group of aquatic moths belonging to the Crambid family, which he studied intensively in the field at a cluster of gravel pits near his boyhood home in Bavaria. Some time after completing his thesis, Dr Reichholf was saddened to find that some of these pits had been converted to swimming pools and others infilled and returned to agriculture, mostly for the cultivation of maize. At the same