Against viticulture and for the death of the Apollo butterfly

Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) is a non-profit organisation under German association law, but above all it is a group of lobbyists who receive state support for their activities. According to the online platform auto.de, this amounted to almost five million Euros in 2018. The DUH received further 2.5 million Euros from the lucrative business of issuing warning letters. There have been repeated doubts about the organisation's non-profit status in recent years. Following a highly controversial campaign against diesel vehicles, the media and research service Table.Media revealed last year that DUH had already actively offered its services to a gas industry association in 2016 – in return for a payment of 2.1 million Euros.

DUH is now suing the state of Rhineland-Palatinate together with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Rheinisch-Westfälischer Lepidopterologen (AGL). Since 2011, the state's Ministry of Viticulture has repeatedly granted winegrowers in the Lower Moselle region exemptions for helicopter spraying, which is prohibited by law in the state.

The reason for the complaint is the endangerment of the Apollo butterfly on the Lower Moselle. Weinfreaks.de reported on this back in December 2023. DUH and AGL claim that the sprays used by helicopters in viticulture are responsible for the rapid decline in the butterfly population. A connection that experts such as the biologist and climatologist Dr Detlef Mader do not understand at all.

Dr Mader has been studying the population of Parnassius apollo vinningensis in the vineyards between Winningen and Bremm for years as part of the long-term climatic development. His prognosis for the conservation of the species is bleak. The figures he presented last year show that without suitable conservation breeding programmes, the extinction of the Apollo butterfly on the Moselle is imminent. In his expert report, which was submitted to the Koblenz Administrative Court as part of the statement of defence, he refers, among other things, to the extinction of other regional Apollo butterflies in central Europe, which in many cases began more than 100 years ago and in some cases even more than 150 years ago. In other words, at a time when there was no talk of climate change or helicopter spraying. The latter have only been around since the early 1970s.

According to Dr Mader, the decisive factor for the dramatic population collapse of the Moselle Apollo was an exceptional period of permafrost with double-digit minus temperatures in the winter of 2012. While the Moselle Apollo was always able to compensate for previous cold periods, the losses in that year were apparently too large to stabilise the population in the long term. Dr Mader explains that during the permafrost periods in the winters from 1992 to 2011, the Moselle Apollo was still able to withstand the hits in the style of a resilient but battered boxer, but was ultimately unable to counter the superior opponent after the permafrost period at the beginning of 2012. “Referring to the [German] proverb ‘The jug goes to the well until it breaks’, the jug of the Moselle Apollo remained stable and intact during all periods of permafrost in the winter from 1992 to 2011 and always went to the well again.” In the winter of 2012, however, the jug broke.

In its statement on the lawsuit, the DUH refers to stable occurrences of other Apollo subspecies in southern Germany, where no viticulture is practised. However, this statement is not true.

The Black Forest Apollo became extinct as early as 1983. Dr Mader: “The persistent cool, wet and sunless weather with numerous sometimes heavy and prolonged rainfalls [...] in the rainy summers of 1980 and 1981 caused considerable mossing of the white stonecrop [...] on the gravel-covered railway embankment at the last remaining airfield of the Black Forest Apollo [...] in the Höllental near Falkensteig [...].” Failure to take nature conservation measures, in particular the failure to remove the moss from the white stonecrop stands on the railway embankment and the regular mowing of the flower meadow with the knapweeds in front of and on the railway embankment far too early, contributed significantly to the extinction of the species in 1983.

Dr Tim Laußmann from the AGL, the co-plaintiff, becomes entangled in contradictions in a scientifically questionable paper written by him and three co-authors (Laußmann, T.; Geyer, A.; Bamann, T.; Müller, D. [2025]. Parnassius apollo vinningensis: a victim of climate change? Journal of Insect Conservation 29, 24.). After comparing the population development in four distribution areas of the Apollo butterfly – in the Kleinziegenfeld Valley in Upper Franconia, in the Altmühl Valley, in the Blau Valley between Blaubeuren and Ulm, and in the Moselle Valley – the authors falsely and completely incorrectly claim that the population of the Apollo butterfly has only collapsed in the Moselle Valley since 2012: “In conclusion, it is positive to note that three of the four recent extra-alpine P. apollo populations, at the Kleinziegenfelder Valley in the Northern Franconian Jura, at the Altmühl Valley in the Southern Franconian Jura and at Blaubeuren in the Swabia Jura, currently appear to be stable.” Just a few sentences earlier, the authors themselves state: “Two of the four sites show a stable trend (Kleinziegenfelder Valley and Blaubeuren) while the reference population in the Altmühl Valley has more than halved since 2015.”

Photo: Laußmann et al.

In fact, there are alarming parallels between the population decline in the Altmühl Valley and that on the Moselle. The population in both areas even seemed to recover briefly after 2012. However, the long-term negative trend could not be halted. In a few years, the tragedy of the Apollo butterfly on the Lower Moselle could be repeated in the Altmühl Valley – and not only there. The study also documents population declines of around 80 per cent in the Kleinziegenfeld Valley since 2012, which was apparently a fateful year for all Apollo species in Germany. Stability looks different.

Since no vineyards are cultivated in any of the three areas mentioned outside the Moselle and no spraying agents are applied by helicopter, the arguments based on the erroneous data analysis by Laußmann et al. regarding the supposed effects of plant protection measures on the Apollo butterfly population are not even rudimentary. Much more exciting is the initial question of the work: Is the Apollo a victim of climate change? Laußmann et al. are also unable to provide a definitive answer to this question, even if they do address some important aspects in the discussion of their results that could certainly indicate this. Ultimately, however, under the guise of science, they reduce the complex question to a simple, populist answer: the bad vintners and their poison are to blame.

Dr Mader has criticised and refuted the completely false interpretation of Laußmann et al. in detail in his report. However, Dr Mader explicitly comes to the conclusion that the Moselle Apollo is not a victim of climate change, but merely a victim of a series of unfavourable climatic events that have occurred in succession in just a few years since 2012.

A scientifically valid explanation for the cause of the decline of the Apollo butterfly is still lacking. Dr Mader can identify the year 2012 as a decisive tipping point and further tipping points in 2019 and 2024. The question of why the Apollo was able to survive in its habitats for centuries despite harsh winters and which factors ultimately accelerated the decline of the species in just a few years can hardly be answered in a simple way. Dr Mader's reasoning is essentially based on an unusual accumulation of unfavourable climatic events since 2012.

But one thing is certain: The sprays used in viticulture are obviously not the culprits. The complaint by the DUH and AGL lacks any factual basis and is probably primarily intended to make headlines in order to stir up public opinion. The fact that this is being done on the backs of Moselle winegrowers, for whom a ban on helicopter spraying would threaten their livelihoods, is hard to beat in terms of callousness. The fact that a ban on spraying would even mean the destruction of the once man-made habitat of the Moselle Apollo is a further proof that the DUH and AGL are in no way concerned with the conservation of the butterfly, but only with their own profiling and staging a public theatrical spectacle. Their completely ineffectual attempt to label the winegrowers of the Moselle as scapegoats for the drastic population crash of the Moselle Apollo is probably also intended to distract attention from the inability and unwillingness of the nature conservation organisations. Due to the lack of conservation measures, which have been sorely needed since 2012, the butterfly probably no longer has a chance to survive. It fits into this picture that Dr Tim Laußmann has repeatedly turned down offers from committed Moselle winegrowers to actively support him in reintroduction projects and forage planting for the Moselle Apollo.

Bibliography

• Laußmann, T.; Geyer, A.; Bamann, T.; Müller, D. (2025). Parnassius apollo vinningensis: a victim of climate change? Journal of Insect Conservation 29, 24.
  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-025-00657-9
• Mader, D. (2022). Prolongation der Apokalypse des Mosel-Apollo am Limit der Extinktion: Stagnation, Comeback oder Requiem? Mader, Walldorf. ISBN 978-3-9815850-7-0.
  Google Drive
• Mader, D. (2021). Quo Vadis, Mosel-Apollo? Mader, Walldorf. ISBN 978-3-9815850-6-3.
  Google Drive
• Mader, D. (2020). Apokalypse des Mosel-Apollo – Aussterben oder Überleben? Mader, Walldorf. ISBN 978-3-9815850-3-2.
  Google Drive