Multiple native Utah insect pollinator species are being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including three butterfly species and three bumble bee species. In early 2024, a threatened listing rule was published for the Nokomis silverspot butterfly (Speyeria nokomis nokomis) -- making it the first Utah-native insect to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, as a result of ongoing habitat fragmentation and impacts from climate change. Then, in late 2024, proposed ESA listings were announced for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and Suckley's cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus suckleyi) -- both historically occurring throughout wide ranges across Western North America, including Utah. Additional insect pollinator species in Utah are facing possible federal listing, including the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus), Morrison's bumble bee (Bombus morrisoni), large marble butterfly (Euchloe ausonides), and Mojave poppy bee (Perdita meconis). As the Utah Pollinator Pursuit project has expanded in scope (beginning with monarchs, then bumble bees, then all pollinating insect taxa) in 2019), volunteer effort and partner collaboration has extended our reach to much of the state. The UPP dataset has profoundly improved our understanding (where very little prior data existed) of monarch habitat use, phenology, and priority restoration areas, which are fundamental to Utah's contributions toward recovery of the western monarch migratory population. The contribution of community science observation data highlights many other opportunities for leveraging public participation in and support for the goals of insect pollinator conservation and possible listing prevention efforts. When making listing decisions, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) considers critical habitats for insects at the species distribution level, as well as any efforts being made by states to protect the species. If any of these six insects were to be listed under ESA, significant areas of Utah associated with these species ranges would likely be subject to regulatory burdens associated with critical habitat that would likely affect current resource use and development in the state. Furthermore, a number of other insect pollinator species face similar concern over their declines in Utah and neighboring states. Ongoing efforts to demonstrate species occurrence in Utah are vital to assess conservation statuses, inform land management decisions that support the recovery of these insect populations, and prevent these potential listings in the near future.

The ongoing goal of this project is to continue building the informational baseline required to address the needs of these species in an effort to prevent listings. The objectives are to fill data gaps for species distribution and habitat use throughout the state that are necessary for strategic planning for future conservation efforts. An exciting new goal for 2025, project leads at Sageland Collaborative, Utah State University, and UDWR will be working to incorporate 2019- 2024 pollinator location data (including Utah Pollinator Pursuit data, vetted iNaturalist data, and Journey North datasets) and findings into adaptive management recommendations for upland and riparian habitat restoration projects. As the project continues, the primary objective for this work is to improve our understanding of rapidly declining and data-deficient pollinator species, habitat quality, and distribution in Utah. With the addition of several focal species, the project format will follow the framework developed for recording monarch presence and habitat quality statewide, though the methodology will shift to streamline and accommodate the increased data needs for multiple species. The second major objective is to obtain more thorough monarch and bumble bee distribution and habitat association data throughout the state through formalized bumble bee surveys and monarch habitat assessments. The partnership with Xerces' Mountain States Bumble Bee Atlas project will expand our capacity for data collection by helping to recruit, train, and dispatch volunteers to assign "grid cells" to survey for bees--expanding the existing participation from land management agency employees. Similarly, Utah Pollinator Pursuit volunteers will be enrolled to repeatedly visit and track habitat quality and monarch presence at targeted stewardship sites around Utah, which will continue to improve our understanding of habitat quality, use, and monarch activity throughout the breeding season. Task 1 - Geographic Expansion of Community Science Volunteer Participation Volunteer recruitment in the first four years of this project has been successful by directly engaging with a motivated and informed community, sharing project details with news outlets and many partner organizations, and expanding existing channels of communication with potential volunteers. These include public presentations, outreach newsletters, mailing lists, and social media announcements by our project leads and partners (Utah State University, Sageland Collaborative, UDWR, Red Butte Gardens, Hogle Zoo, University of Utah, Southern Utah University, Natural History Museum of Utah, The Nature Conservancy, Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point, Utah Native Plant Society, local butterfly and monarch enthusiast groups, and agency partners including Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, Natural Resource Conservation Service, National Park Service, and the Conservation Districts of Utah Department of Agriculture and Food). To date, participation has expanded from the densely populated Wasatch Front to all areas of Utah, including the Uinta Basin, central and southern Utah, and public and private land. This year, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, an internationally-recognized organization, is joining Utah Pollinator Pursuit's growing list of partners. The Mountain States Bumble Bee Atlas project will extend public outreach, volunteer recruitment, training, education materials, and importantly, species identification capacity from submitted bumble bee photographs. Bumble Bee Atlas volunteers will receive training through Xerces-developed virtual workshops, and data from targeted bumble bee surveys will be submitted to the online Bumble Bee Atlas project platform. Furthermore, this partnership allows for data sharing between our efforts that should vastly improve the abilities of the Rare Insect Conservation Program to perform conservation status updates on Utah's bumble bee species. A continued focus will be engaging and educating more rural communities on actions that support pollinator health and diversity on private lands, and encourage participation in habitat surveys. Since 2022, we have leveraged existing projects and opportunities to establish community relationships, including the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program funded by HB224 Pollinator Bill, which has distributed thousands of native plants to awardees to increase native pollinator habitat on private lands and in restoration projects. This funding supported the development of educational materials such as native seed packets, and brochures, handouts, and a website including detailed information on gardening with pollinator-friendly species, how to support native pollinators, and a growing list of other resources. The Rare Insect Conservation Program field crew will work with previous habitat program awardees to conduct pollinator surveys and report on species benefiting from the increased native habitat. We will pursue more of these public engagement opportunities in 2025 to reach new communities in Utah. Additionally, we will continue coordinating with the outreach efforts of the Utah Monarch Advocates group to make contacts with interested entities to distribute seasonally appropriate monarch butterfly information, promote public awareness through community newsletters and advertising, and offer rewards for monarch sightings by county. The Utah Pollinator Pursuit data collection format will be modified this year to allow for additional taxa, publicly accessible records, and expert identification of observed pollinators. Opportunistic pollinator observation data will now be collected through the "Utah Pollinator Pursuit" project on iNaturalist--a free, user-friendly, online community science database with hundreds of millions of georeferenced volunteer observations, and countless experts that contribute to species identifications. Training for volunteers will cover target at-risk species, identification and data needs, the basics of using the iNaturalist platform (desktop and app), and how to take high-quality observation photos. Monarch habitat assessment data collection forms will remain on the Utah Pollinator Pursuit Survey123 app, as will the option to submit monarch and bumble bee data (though this will no longer be emphasized or explained in training events). Training events will be both in person and recorded, so that all training materials and resources can be accessible any time on the Utah Pollinator Pursuit website and iNaturalist Project page. Finally, we will work with local NRCS and UDAF Conservation District offices who have established relationships with landowners in their respective regions and can promote the importance of pollinator habitat. The passage of the 2021 Pollinator Bill housed at UDAF creates a new collaborative opportunity to offer additional assistance to landowners who are interested in enhancing pollinator-friendly habitat on their properties. Assistance for pollinator habitat assessments can be offered both through this program and through the Utah Association of Conservation Districts, and landowners who are interested can apply to receive regionally-appropriate seedlings and seeds for pollinator habitat enhancements. Combining efforts for the Utah Pollinator Pursuit and the Pollinator Habitat Program will continue to expand public awareness and participation in both projects. Task 2 - Prioritizing Field Sites Across Utah According to Previous Field Efforts and Existing Data Gaps Recruiting regional participation - As public awareness and involvement in Utah Pollinator Pursuit has increased, there has been a growing interest from agency personnel and community members to contribute their knowledge and expertise to assessing monarch and bumble bee presence and habitat. As mentioned in Task 1, we will continue to find ways to improve communication with rural community members, and also leverage existing relationships between agency personnel (local NRCS offices, Conservation Districts, and USFWS partners program) and local landowners to encourage habitat assessments using the Utah Pollinator Pursuit app on private lands. The goal is to motivate and train private property owners to evaluate their own properties for these target species and submit photos to the Utah Pollinator Pursuit project on iNaturalist, or welcome Conservation District Planners for assistance or UPP leads and volunteers to assist them. We hope to emphasize involvement from communities outside of Utah's urban centers. In 2025 and 2026, Utah Pollinator Pursuit will continue encouraging volunteers to use iNaturalist for opportunistic observations of butterflies, bumble bees, and other pollinator insects encountered from spring through fall. Agency and academic partners conducting targeted and repeat bumble bee species surveys will continue to follow the survey protocols from previous years, and will now submit their data through the Bumble Bee Atlas reporting platform, along with other Bumble Bee Atlas-trained volunteers sent to survey sites within 50 km grid cells across Utah. These photos will be analyzed by bumble bee experts for species identification to continue resolving data deficiencies for the distribution, community assemblages, habitat associations, and phenology of bumble bees in Utah. Additional Target Taxa The Utah Pollinator Pursuit project on iNaturalist will allow for additional target species, habitat associations, and reference materials to be included as necessary. Furthermore, the vast community of taxonomic experts who contribute to species identification continues to expand our capacity for research grade species observations with no additional project costs. Task 3 - Redefining Field Protocols and Additional Field Efforts The past five years of engaging community scientists with the assistance of ESMF funding have highlighted ways that our project can improve, including how to extend the usefulness of our collected data to a broader pollinator-focused professional community. For example, other initiatives have developed pollinator habitat assessments with protocols that serve as examples for our improved data collection forms, where appropriate. Additionally, as new information arises regarding species of concern, we are working to modify our data collection format to allow for flexibility in the future. As in previous years, our goal is to recruit as many community science volunteers as possible, and provide a format that is both engaging and safe for participants with respect to comfort, abilities, and COVID-19 guidelines. Since Spring of 2024 Participants submitting opportunistic photos of butterflies, bees, and other pollinator insects have been using the Utah Pollinator Pursuit iNaturalist Project. This community science training model has worked well to capture more information for Utah Wildlife Action Plan 'species of conservation need' and 'information need' and will continue into 2026. Bumble Bee Atlas protocols will be used for systematic bumble bee surveys conducted by all volunteers (including agency partner biologists), and nonlethal sampling will replace the request for species voucher collections. Each of these data collection protocols will enable more streamlined data sharing with Utah's Natural Heritage Program as well as larger westwide databases. Task 4 - Collaboration with Agency Partners to Survey Habitat Sites Statewide Partnerships with local offices for federal agencies throughout Utah have enabled better access to public land and more thorough data collection, as well as improved communication with landowners and community members. Monarchs - Because much of the ideal monarch habitat in Utah (wet meadows, stream corridors) are privately owned, our partnership with local NRCS offices, USFWS partners program, and UDAF conservation districts make it possible for this program to expand to private property with landowner consent. Contact with private property owners and Tribal Communities will be facilitated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Conservation Districts for educational purposes and possible access to highly suitable habitat for additional survey plots. NRCS employees as well as Conservation District planners often have the relationships necessary with private landowners who may be interested in allowing volunteers on their property and/or having additional information regarding pollinator presence and diversity. By continuing to rely on these partnerships, we hope to build a more complete understanding of monarch habitat availability on privately-owned lands around Utah. Bumble bees - Since 2021, volunteer biologists and field technicians from BLM field offices and National Forests have conducted monthly bumble bee surveys and high priority focal sites on public lands. These agency partners have agreed to continue these bumble bee surveys, and will submit data collected through the Mountain States Bumble Bee Atlas project. Task 5 - Part-Time Rare Insect Technician To extend the capacity of the Rare Insect Conservation Program team through the demands of the busy field season (collection, processing, and management of pollinator data), we will hire a part-time Rare Insect Technician through the Utah State University Quinney College of Natural Resources. The Technician will assist the native insect conservation project leader with efforts including conducting field work (habitat and pollinator survey efforts state-wide for multiple species), data management for submitted observations, and timely processing of valuable data during the field season. In particular, the Technician will contribute to field surveys for silverspot butterflies, at-risk bumble bees, and desert-restricted butterflies, as well as assisting with pollinator assessments on past Utah Pollinator Habitat Program projects and WRI land management projects with potential pollinator benefits. The Technician will also assist with updating the State's natural heritage database with species occurrence records. A significant portion of the salary and benefit costs will be covered by match funding from BLM and USFS contracts, in order to support necessary fieldwork and species assessments, and this cost-effective leveraging of partner agency resources will enable a crucial expansion of the Rare Insect Conservation Program at a critical period of species conservation assessments. Task 6 - Reporting Technicians and USU/DWR staff will compile and organize the data in order to incorporate all information into a written report. Continued communication with WAFWA and WMMM will assure data reported are in a suitable format for incorporation into the regional population monitoring model. Bumble bee photographs and data submitted to the national bumble bee database managed by the Xerces Society will both improve national distribution maps and assist with species identification. Further, systematically-collected bumble bee survey data will be reported to the USFWS to improve their habitat modeling efforts and development of a Western Bumble Bee Species Status Assessment. Project partners will coordinate with Utah's Natural Heritage Database staff to ensure that Utah Pollinator Pursuit data can be delivered in a format that is most useful and streamlined for incorporation into existing database management and maintenance practices. Project data will be processed for quality assurance and collated at the end of the season. Project partners will disseminate data to each regional biologist in a spreadsheet, as well as to the Utah Heritage Program, for ease of reporting and the management of the Natural Heritage database. Data that will continue to be presented at state meetings include number of community scientists, field hours contributed over the season, pollinator presence, life stage, breeding, and habitat attributes. Under development is a story map that shows monarch distribution across Utah throughout the breeding season, based on community science data, which will ultimately be publicly available while protecting data location privacy. Agency partners will receive reports and summaries of their survey data contributions and our improved understanding of rare butterfly and bumble bee species distribution. Project outcomes and aforementioned data will also be presented to active and potential future community scientist groups to maintain and improve engagement in Utah Pollinator Pursuit data gathering efforts. Finally, efforts that fulfill conservation strategies outlined in the Western Monarch Conservation Plan will be reported through the state partner portal on WAFWA's Monarch Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT). Education and outreach activities that benefit monarchs and native pollinators, habitat restoration activities, community scientist training events, and the development of pollinator-friendly best practices will all be reflected as Utah's efforts to fulfill its commitment to the Plan. Task 7- Local seed Collection for Regionally-Adapted Late-Season Nectar Resources The availability of regionally-adapted native nectar resources is highlighted as a major priority for many conservation strategies focused on supporting pollinators in the West. WAFWA's Western Monarch Conservation Plan, Xerces Society's bumble bee conservation guidelines, and the recently-drafted Pollinator and Monarch Strategy by the Bureau of Land Management all emphasize that nectar availability is a limiting factor for and growing threat to pollinator success, particularly in the late growing season in the arid West. Presently, a majority of the late-season, nectar-providing species for the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin regions are not commercially available. To address this issue in Utah, the rare plant conservation program is taking steps to establish a network of available regionally-adapted nectar plant materials and promote their incorporation into habitat restoration and enhancement projects. The program's botany team is knowledgeable of the location, abundance and time of seed production of many of these species. In 2024, seed for about two dozen nectar resource species was collected and distributed to the state prison and Salt Lake City Public Lands to produce seedlings meant to be incorporated into such future projects. The botany team will continue to collect important nectar resource seed for both seeding and propagation efforts with input from the Great Basin Research Center in Ephraim and the BLM and other seed increase programs. This task will also be supported by the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, as the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program is also aiming to make pollinator-friendly plants more widely available for habitat projects by both public and government entities. The Utah State Prison was contracted to produce seedlings that will be planted in strategic areas and become a future seed source for some of these difficult to find species. One of these strategic places is UDOT rest areas in northern Utah. Target species were planted specifically for the purpose of producing difficult to find native plant seed. These sites need ongoing maintenance to be able to get the highest seed yield possible. This work will also be supported by funding from the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program passed in FY2021. As we learn more about the capacity and willingness of these greenhouses and growers to grow out nectar species, their experience with these difficult to find species will be shared with other growers and seed producers as potential species for further research/ grow out trials to determine whether and how easily seed could be produced on a larger scale. Task 8 - Maintaining Utah Pollinator Pursuit Website and iNaturalist Project Page The Utah Pollinator Pursuit (UPP) website and iNaturalist Project Page will continue to provide information for participating in community science efforts, educational resources for understanding and supporting pollinator needs, and direct links to partners and collaborators. The UPP page will also continue to serve as a community resource hub in an effort to recognize and improve coordination with the many projects aimed at pollinator conservation in Utah, including resources for landowners to create pollinator habitat, a calendar of related events, and coverage in the press. The UPP page will reflect support from a growing number of nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and community groups. These partners currently include the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, University of Utah, Southern Utah University, Red Butte Garden, the Natural History Museum of Utah, Tracy Aviary, The Hogle Zoo, The Nature Conservancy, Hollow Tree Honey Foundation, Wild Bee Project, Utah Lepidopterist Society, the Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point, and local enthusiast groups such as Utah Friends of Monarchs, Monarchs of Bridgerland, Western Monarch Pollinator Pathways, Utah Butterfly Field Trips, and Salt Lake Bug Lovers.

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The Western Monarch Conservation Plan 2019-2069 outlines several areas in which to assist with recovery actions. Strategies are explained for different types of lands including natural, developed, urban, and agricultural. Further, outreach and education is a key part of the strategies for each land type.

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If any habitat assessments or surveys occur on private lands, a steward (NRCS or Conservation District representative) will be present and will have coordinated with the landowner before any volunteers would be invited to assist in survey efforts on a property. Collections of bumble bee species voucher specimens on public lands will be conducted with permission where required (specifically per National Forests that require collections permits) and disclosure to regional BLM and USFS offices for where permits are not required. Bumble bees collected on private property will first receive permission from property owners.

In 2024, we expanded the pollinator insect data collection to include requests for all observations of pollinator species (with photo voucher requested for species verification using iNaturalist). This means any insects observed on a flowering plant were included in the opportunistic data collection performed by community scientists. Survey Methods for Bumble Bees - Since piloting bumble data collection with UPP in 2020, volunteers have submitted more than 1,800 sightings of 17 confirmed bumble bee species encountered across the state. The 2023 field season continued the deliberate, repeated site surveys by agency volunteers, and resulted in the collection of 75 bumble bee specimens representing at least 13 species, including target species such as the western bumble bee. UPP data collection will be replaced with the Bumble Bee Atlas data submission format, and voucher specimens will no longer be collected from every site visit. Survey details per individual bee include behavior, flowers visited, habitat quality, and suggested species identification, along with photo uploads for species verification. Thanks to the detection of western bumble bees by community scientists and agency field biologists in the Wasatch Mountains, Cache County, the Uinta Basin, Ashley, Manti-La Sal and Dixie National Forests, we have improved information on potential rare bumble bee habitat and the threats facing these landscapes. Xerces' Mountain States Bumble Bee Atlas coordinator will offer training refreshers upon request for agency volunteers to conduct bumble bee surveys at focal sites across the state. Agency volunteers will visit a survey site once a month for at least three consecutive months, beginning as early as May in southwestern Utah, or as late as August in southeastern Utah, as target species in different regions fly earlier or later in the year. Biologists visiting a survey site will first record numbers of participating observers, relative cloud cover, habitat type and quality, and plant species in bloom at their site. Volunteers will be asked to spend 45 person-minutes (45 minutes/ # people) searching within an area of 2.5 acres with abundant floral resources, to locate and record any bumble bees present. If bumble bees are detected, volunteers will take photographs of the bees and note their behavior (foraging on flowers, resting on flowers/stems, or walking/digging in soil). Photos of bumble bees, nectar resources, and habitat will be submitted through the Mountain States Bumble Bee Atlas project page. Submitted data (including georeferenced photographs) will be evaluated by trained bumble bee experts and assessed for quality control and species identification. No information on bumble bees will be accepted without an accompanying photo.

To support the recent inclusion of insect SGCNs in Utah's conservation and habitat management projects, the Rare Insect Conservation Program hopes to target and monitor select habitat restoration projects that demonstrate promising benefits to our focal pollinator species. Projects in particular that protect and restore degraded habitat that supports insect SGCNs (e.g. silverspot butterflies, monarch butterflies, large marble butterflies, western bumble bees, Morrison's bumble bees, American bumble bees, etc.) and SGINs with known habitat associations, will be prioritized by the RICP field crew for evaluating pollinator community composition during the field season.

Partners include the Utah State University, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Sageland Collaborative, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, Bureau of Land Management in Utah, US Forest Service Utah offices, National Park Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA-ARS, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah Department of Corrections Greenhouse Program, Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, University of Utah, Red Butte Gardens, The Hogle Zoo, the Natural History Museum of Utah, Tracy Aviary, The Nature Conservancy, Utah Lepidopterist Society, Project GNBee, the Leonardo Museum, the Butterfly Biosphere at Thanksgiving Point, Wild Bee Project, Utah Friends of Monarchs, Monarchs of Bridgerland, Western Monarch Pollinator Pathways, Utah Butterfly Field Trips, Salt Lake Bug Lovers, and Hollowtree Honey Foundation. As a more comprehensive data set for suitable pollinator habitat and distribution of insect species is developed, this project will apply to ongoing and future planning efforts for the protection, restoration, and creation of at-risk butterfly and native bee habitat. Land owners and managers will have an improved understanding of priority locations for habitat enhancement and creation, as well as the necessary diversity of plant communities that support pollinating insects.

The information generated from these surveys will facilitate a more directed approach to addressing conservation needs for the target species. Additionally, the expansion of these efforts to focus on more insect pollinator species will include the goal of diversifying funding sources to reduce funding requests from the State of Utah in the future.

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