*Utah's Rare Insect Conservation Program team: Iris McCulloch, Amanda Barth, Adam Sovinsky, and Rachel Irvin.*

In celebration of National Pollinator Week, we're highlighting our amazing partners in conservation with Utah's Rare Insect Conservation Program! This program, led by Utah State University, works with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and other partners to develop data-informed conservation actions for rare and at-risk insect species to prevent the need for federal listing under the Endangered Species Act, and support holistic habitat-level recovery.

Get to know the outstanding individuals that make up this program in our interviews with them below!

Amanda Barth

she/her, Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program Leader

What has been your experience working with Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program?
I founded this program in 2019 and was the only one doing everything until 2023 when Rachel came on board and made so much more possible for assessing insect conservation statuses, surveying rare species, and doing outreach both to the public and to our agency partners. Having Adam and Iris join this last year has expanded our capacity in amazing ways—gathering and analyzing data for insects and their habitats, developing data-driven conservation actions like restoration, and expanding our knowledge of insect diversity throughout Utah. It has been incredibly gratifying to see how much we have accomplished, and it has been great to have a really capable and hardworking team!

Can you share a memorable experience from the field?
Lots of our fieldwork has been trial and error while we learn the best ways to survey a given species or habitat, because they’re rare and difficult to find! So when I’m looking for a rare butterfly, bumble bee, or tiger beetle, etc., I’m also finding so many other cool species, many of which are also rare or poorly understood. That’s part of the thrill of every fieldwork trip, I think.

What is your favorite rare insect species that you’ve worked with in your role?
Early on, I was trying to find western bumble bees, and I went all over the state during a really dry year to find them to no avail. I found several other bumble bee species that year, also rare, and learned a lot about their unique habitat needs during that effort. When I finally started finding western bumble bees, I was just ecstatic! It was the following year—we had better snowpack and rain across Utah, and they just showed up again. That was a major lesson for me, to keep looking and trying to understand how the landscape and climate are affecting species that used to be really common, like western bumble bees. Finding them is always really special, and they’re just beautiful little bees.

What do you wish more people understood about insects/conservation?
I wish people understood that insects are the major drivers of most ecosystem functions. They move energy and nutrients through every system. They pollinate flowers, create rich soil, keep populations of other species in balance, improve water quality, decompose dead organisms, and provide food for countless other wildlife. Insects are habitat, and they’re also really cool and beautiful little creatures. I wish people appreciated all the ways insects matter to our life on Earth!

Rachel Irvin

she/her, Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Research Technician

What has been your experience working with Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program?
In the 2.5 years that I've been a part of the RICP, our focus has been data scraping and reaching out to local experts to obtain any existing information on our rare insects of concern. Most of the insects that we are interested in have little to no information known about them, leading to a large hunt for basic species data such as occurrences and habitat needs. My winters have been spent searching through community science data, and during the field season I have completed formal and informal surveys for insects such as butterflies, moths, native bees, grasshoppers, flies, velvet ants, wasps and much, much more.

I've also had the pleasure of teaching others about insects and conservation, both in the field and in classroom settings. It is always exciting to collaborate with others on how to use a butterfly net to capture butterflies, bees, and tiger beetles. Luckily, given our occurrence data needs, we are usually not collecting, but photographing and counting specimens before releasing them.

I could go into detail about the many projects that I've had the opportunity to be a part of, but I will wrap it up and say that I've had a plethora of unique experiences in this role. I am the second person in the small team that is the RICP. No one has filled this role before me, and I have enjoyed paving a new path and working alongside Amanda Barth to determine what we believe should be prioritized for the conservation of Utah's rare insects.

Can you share a favorite experience from the field?
If I had to choose just one, it would have to be the first time that I surveyed fireflies in Dinosaur National Monument. I had never seen a firefly in person before, and had been looking forward to the survey for weeks. Amanda and I were staring into the darkness, getting tricked into seeing flashes that were non existent, when finally, two fireflies flew about twenty feet in front of me. My brain's first reaction was that I had just seen cows with light reflecting from their eyes, but then I realized that it was nearly 10 feet off the ground. It was absolutely magical. The area was completely draped in darkness, and the fireflies shone so brightly as they seemed to dance in the air. We ended up catching a couple and photographed them so that we could upload the observation to Firefly Atlas. I remember being surprised by the way they looked, like cute little sunflower seeds. I have dreamt about fireflies many times since that first experience.

What is your favorite rare insect species that you’ve worked with in your role?
I would have to say that my favorite species that I've worked with is the Coral Pink Sand Dunes Tiger Beetle, Cicindela albissima. This beetle is endemic to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes (CPSD) in southern Utah and is managed under a conservation agreement between the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Recreation, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Kane County, Utah. Tiger beetles in general are very beautiful, often characterized by iridescent colors and interesting patterns on their elytra (hardened forewings). They are known for being incredibly fast and capture their prey with their large jaws. The past two summers I have been a part of the adult and larval beetle counts in Coral Pink, and I recently had a hand in writing the CPSD Tiger Beetle Final Report, which summarizes how the population is faring. Learning how to catch these fast beetles with a net has been a really fun experience and I feel like part of me will forever be a part of those sand dunes.

What do you wish more people understood about insects/conservation?
Sometimes we focus on one insect, or one aspect of an ecosystem, and that can be an oversimplified approach. If we step back and take a look at habitats as a whole, we see that every creature and plant work together to create balance. Our goal at the end of the day is to not simply increase the population numbers of insects, but to ensure the longevity and health of the ecosystems that sustain them. Lastly, I want people to appreciate that insects have a part in so many aspects of our natural world: caterpillars, beetle larvae, and grasshoppers can be nourishment for birds, wasps aid in pest management, beetles process debris and create healthy soils, butterflies and bees are excellent pollinators, and population booms like that seen with cicadas and crickets creates a feeding frenzy for many animals. The insect world is complex, and I would never want to live in a place where they don't exist.

Iris McCulloch

she/her, Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation GIS/Field Technician

What has been your experience working with Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program?
Being a part of RICP has provided such an incredible opportunity to work with some of the coolest people doing conservation work today, as well as a great chance to get up close with some of Utah’s rarest and most interesting insect species. Some days I still don’t quite believe that I get to do what I do for a job, in many ways it feels like a dream come true! It’s really special to get to take part in the work being done to save some of the smallest, most overlooked, but nevertheless most important pieces of our natural world. And of course, it’s an honor to be in such good company!

Can you share a favorite experience from the field?
One of my favorite field experiences just happened a few months ago: we were out at Fish Springs looking for rare species and what we discovered was a very dry, almost barren landscape with little insect activity. I think we were all feeling a little down because we thought maybe the trip out there had been for nothing. As we were walking along on a salt flat, someone spotted an insect flying low along the ground. The whole team started trailing after it and eventually we realized it was a tiger beetle! It turns out we had walked right into a big stretch of tiger beetle habitat, complete with larval burrows all around us, and before long we were all chasing tiger beetles trying to catch and identify one. It ended up being a really good trip, filled with bees, wasps, butterflies, beetles, and moths. It’s incredible what you can find when you get out and start looking!

What is your favorite rare insect species that you’ve worked with in your role?
It’s hard to pick a favorite species but I really would have to say the Coral Pink Sand Dunes Tiger Beetle (Cicindela albissima). Before I worked here I knew of this species because it was one of the only insect species listed as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) under the Utah State Wildlife Action Plan. I always wanted to get a chance to see one, and then within two weeks of starting to work with the RICP, I got a chance to go down and help out with a survey. The beetles are just so full of personality, they have really fearsome jaws but they’re so small they just end up being kinda cute. They’re a bit of a pain to survey, but when you get up close with them in their natural habitat, it’s immediately clear why we should be conserving the natural beauty of the place and the beetles!

What do you wish more people understood about insects/conservation?
I wish more people understood that conservation as a whole needs to happen on a habitat or ecosystem level rather than a species level. You can’t just go out and try to protect a single species and have it work out, because nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything in our world is interconnected, and we need to be addressing all the different pieces in order to add up to a successful conservation story. For example, many of the landscapes and plant communities that we love and rely on can only exist because of the work of our native pollinator species, who themselves can only survive if they have adequate habitat and resources. People sometimes seem to think I work in a really weird niche based on a special interest, but the truth is insects form the base of the pyramid for a lot of ecosystems, and insect conservation impacts all of us more than we probably realize. As climate change progresses, insects will certainly be a part of the equation to building resilience and ensuring a bright future for ourselves and the world around us.

Adam Sovinsky

he/him, Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation GIS/Field Technician

What has been your experience working with Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program?
Being part of the Rare Insect Conservation Program has been the most extraordinary and immersive opportunity I've had so far in my career. I've always had a special place in my heart for invertebrates, so this role has allowed me to enrich and expand my knowledge and appreciation for these species, which are so crucial to our native ecosystems here in Utah.

Can you share a memorable experience from the field?
I think my most memorable experience in the field has to be my first pollinator survey in the La Sals a couple years back. We stayed in a remote UDWR cabin on the northeast side of the range and surveyed for several pollinator species of interest. It was memorable for me because it was the first chance I got to really take the time to get in touch with a landscape and its native ecology–something I would never have been able to do without Amanda and the rest of the team. I learned so much and gained a deep desire for exploration and discovery.

What is your favorite rare insect species that you’ve worked with in your role?
My favorite rare insect species to work with in this role are probably tiger beetles. The colors and maculations on their elytra are very beautiful, and vary by species and subspecies. I also find their larval development extremely fascinating.

What do you wish more people understood about insects/conservation?
I wish more people understood that insects are not only beautiful and incredibly unique animals in their own right, but are also an essential component of sustaining healthy populations in the charismatic species that people often first think of when they think about conservation. For so many species of birds and fish and other charming vertebrates, insects are a vital source of food that supports their very existence in places like Utah.

Thank you to our partners at Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Program for your dedication to these remarkable species! It’s through collaborative efforts like these across the state that conservation is made possible.

You can support this work by participating in community science projects like Utah Pollinator Pursuit and logging your insect observations on iNaturalist. Each observation contributed allows scientists to better understand how pollinating insects use the landscape so that we can better conserve species in need.

Interview & photos by Sierra Hastings
Cover photo shared by Amanda Barth

Highlighting Utah's Rare Insect Conservation Program