‘Every tree used to be blanketed with them’: photographer captures campaign to save monarch butterfly

Climate change and pesticides have combined to pose a deadly threat to the vivid species. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards celebrate the fightback Jaime Rojo has been following the fate of the monarch butterfly for more than 20 years. In the process the Spanish photographer has watched one of the planet’s most colourful, flamboyant insect species succumb to the combined onslaught of habitat destruction, climate change, pesticides, drought and wildfires. Its population has crashed in the process. It is a dramatic, disturbing story that will be recognised next month when Rojo is given a highly commended award for his photojournalism at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London.