National Pollinator Week 2026: Why Caterpillars Deserve More Credit

National Pollinator Week Is June 22 – 28, 2026

The basic idea of National Pollinator Week is straightforward enough. It’s an annual observance started by the Pollinator Partnership and recognized by the U.S. Senate in 2007. It exists because pollinator populations, bees especially, but also butterflies, moths, beetles, bats, and hummingbirds, have been declining for decades due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change, and it’s worth setting aside a week to talk about that.

Pollinator.org’s 2026 theme is “Life on a Leaf: Celebrating Caterpillars and Host Plants,” which is a bit of a departure from the usual bees-and-wildflowers framing, but a useful one.

Why Pollinators Matter

Pollinators are responsible for the reproduction of the vast majority of flowering plants on earth. And about a third of the global food supply depends on them in one way or another. Without pollinators working the landscape, most fruits, vegetables, and nuts don’t get produced, and most wild plant populations can’t sustain themselves. It’s an easy thing to take for granted until it starts to go wrong.

Pollinators Are In Trouble

The threats to pollinators are real and well documented. Habitat loss has reduced the areas where pollinators can feed and nest. Pesticide use, particularly neonicotinoids, affects bee populations directly. Climate change is shifting the timing of flowering seasons and knocking pollinator and plant cycles out of alignment. The result is that species that were once common are becoming less so, and some are in serious decline.

Caterpillars Become Pollinators

Most pollinator conversations focus on the adult stage, the bee visiting a flower, the butterfly nectaring on a plant, which makes sense, because that’s the part people see. But for moths and butterflies, the larval stage, the caterpillar, is where a lot of the real ecological work happens, and it’s where a lot of the vulnerability is too.

Many moth and butterfly species in North America can only reproduce on one or two specific host plants. Not just any plant that happens to be blooming, but specific species that their larvae are adapted to eat. A monarch butterfly needs milkweed. Spicebush swallowtail caterpillars need spicebush or sassafras. Many moth species depend on native oaks, willows, or cherries. If you take those host plants out of the landscape, it doesn’t really matter how many flowers are available for adult butterflies to visit, because the population can’t reproduce.

This is why the Pollinator Partnership chose host plants as this year’s focus. Planting a pollinator garden is good thing and definitely worth doing, but if the landscape doesn’t also support the larval stage of these species, the adult populations will eventually decline regardless. The lowly little caterpillar is the part of the equation that tends to get overlooked.

How You Can Help Pollinators

The most effective thing most people can do for pollinator habitat is plant native species, and specifically natives that serve as host plants for local moth and butterfly larvae. In Central Texas that means live oaks, cedar elms, pecans, native willows, Texas mountain laurel, passionvine for gulf fritillary caterpillars, and milkweed for monarchs, among others. Native plants that have evolved alongside local insect populations are almost always going to provide more ecological value than ornamentals, even flowering ones.

Reducing or eliminating pesticide use in the yard helps significantly, particularly systemic pesticides that persist in plant tissue. Leaving some leaf litter and bare ground supports ground-nesting bees and overwintering moth pupae. And if you are lucky enough to have mature native trees on your property, keeping them healthy is one of the more impactful things you can do for local pollinator habitat, since a single native oak can support hundreds of species of moth and butterfly larvae.

Pollinator Week is a good time to think about what the landscape around your home is actually doing ecologically, and whether there are small changes that might help it do even more.

We Can Help You Help the Pollinators

Do you want to help the caterpillars and butterflies? We can help you choose and plant the best trees and plants for your yard to attract and shelter Texas pollinators. Give us a call!