{"id":635121,"date":"2026-06-12T16:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T16:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635121\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T16:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T16:08:12","slug":"peacock-butterfly-voted-nations-favourite-in-uk-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635121\/","title":{"rendered":"Peacock butterfly voted nation&#8217;s favourite in UK poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The charity declared a &#8220;butterfly emergency&#8221; in 2024 as numbers recorded during its annual Big Butterfly Count <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/newsround\/articles\/cqlvr5zrk3zo\" class=\"ssrcss-15td0ur-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fell to a record low<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This information will help conservationists to see how some of our more-common species are faring, which in turn helps to build a wider picture of how all butterflies and moths are doing,&#8221; Merry added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This year&#8217;s Big Butterfly Count takes place from Friday 17 July to Sunday 9 August. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Butterflies play a very important role in our ecosystems, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/newsround\/65831555\" class=\"ssrcss-15td0ur-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">helping pollinate flowers<\/a> and plants, controlling pests and providing food for other animals, like birds and bats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Butterflies and moths are also super ancient insects &#8211; they&#8217;ve been around for at least 50 million years, although some say it could be closer to 150 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Currently, more than three-quarters of UK butterfly species are now in decline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">What do you love about butterflies? Do you have a fave butterfly?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Have your say in the comments below&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charity declared a &#8220;butterfly emergency&#8221; in 2024 as numbers recorded during its annual Big Butterfly Count fell&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-635121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}