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American lepidopterist, writer, and teacher

Robert Michael Pyle (born 19 July 1947) is an American lepidopterist, writer, teacher, and founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Much of his life story is told in the 2020 feature film The Dark Divide, where Pyle is played by David Cross.

Pyle grew up in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, and took all of his early education in Aurora Public Schools, graduating in 1965. He attended the University of Washington, where he received a B. S. degree in "Nature Perception and Protection" in a self styled General Studies program. This was followed by an M. S. in Nature Interpretation from the UW College of Forest Resources. During his time there he was also involved in environmental activism, serving on the university Conservation Council and testifying against unsustainable development plans. A Fulbright Scholarship in 1971 72 enabled Pyle to study butterfly conservation at the Monks Wood Experimental Station in Abbot's Ripton, England, with John Heath and other mentors, which led to his founding of the Xerces Society in 1971. From there he entered Yale University Graduate School to study insect conservation ecology with Charles Remington. He received his Ph. D. ("The Eco geography of Lepidoptera Conservation") from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1976. On July 30, 1966, he married his high school sweetheart JoAnne R. Clark, who was also a student of biology. They divorced amicably in 1973, and he married botanist Sally Hughes on June 7, 1974. This second marriage would last a decade. He married Thea Linnaea Peterson Hellyer (a botanist and silk screen artist) on October 19, 1985. She died of ovarian cancer on November 20, 2013. In 2022, Pyle's New Riverside Press published Part of Me: Poems and Other Writings of Thea Linnaea Pyle.

Pyle worked as ranger naturalist in Sequoia National Park, butterfly conservation consultant for the Wildlife Division of Papua New Guinea, Northwest Land Steward for The Nature Conservancy, and co manager of the Species Conservation Monitoring Center in Cambridge, UK, where he co compiled the IUCN Invertebrate Red Data Book. He has been deeply involved in Monarch butterfly conservation since 1975, convening the First Conference on Monarch Conservation and biology in Morelos, Mexico, and chairing The Monarch Project of the Xerces Society with Lincoln Brower and Melody Mackey Allen. He has also been active in old growth forest conservation in the Pacific Northwest. These involvements continue. Pyle has published many papers on butterfly conservation ecology and biogeography, and he continues field work as Co coordinator of the Washington Butterfly Survey. He co authored (with Paul Hammond) a major paper reviewing the Mariposa Copper butterfly (Lycaena mariposa) and describing nine new subspecies. His most recent paper reports on the behavior of the Woodland Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanoides) during a total eclipse of the sun. Ongoing studies concern forty years of monitoring butterfly phenology at one study site and the biology of a northerly migrant species, both pertaining to climate change.

Pyle has taught writing, conservation biology, and natural history seminars for many colleges and institutes around the world, and presented hundreds of invited lectures and keynote addresses. He has served as Visiting Professor of Environmental Writing at Utah State University; as Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana; and as place based writing instructor for the Aga Khan Humanities Project in Tajikistan and the Writers' Centre of Tasmania. On twenty five occasions from 1976 to 2013, he was a presenter and field trip leader at the annual week long National Wildlife Federation Conservation Summits and their successors, Family Nature Summits. He has also led natural history seminars for Cloud Ridge Naturalists, the North Cascades, Olympic Park, and Glacier Park Institutes, and in numerous other settings. He has served on the faculty of the Sitka Institute, Fishtrap, Haystack, Art of the Wild, Breadloaf, and many other writers' conferences and events and has led natural history tours for the National Audubon Society, the Smithsonian Institution, the Wilderness Society, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and The Nature Conservancy, and Green & Pleasant Tours ("Birds and Beers of Britain") among others.

Earth & Eros (foreword "The Earth Whispers and Croons"). 2015. White Cloud Press. Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril (essay "Evening Falls on the Maladaptive Ape"). 2010. Trinity University Press. Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (several entries). 2006. Trinity University Press. The Way of Natural History (essay "A Natural Histerrical Feller in an Unwondering Age"). 2010. Trinity University Press. Wild in the City (introduction "No vacancy" and chapter "Bright Butterflies, Big City."). 2011. Oregon State University Press. Nature's Fading Chorus: Classic and Contemporary Writings on Amphibians (prologue "Reflections in a Golden Eye," and chapter "Waterproof Wildlife.") 2000. Island Press. Facing the Lion: Writers on Life and Craft (essay "Secrets of the Talking Leaf"). 1996. Beacon Press. Words From the Land, Volume II (essay "A Grand Surprise"). 1995. University of Nevada Press. The Norton Book of Nature Writing (essay "And the Coyotes Will Lift A Leg"). 1990. Norton. Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden (afterword and chapter "Butterfly Watching Tips"). 1990; new edition, 1998. Xerces Society/Sierra Club Books. The Art of the Butterfly (afterword). 1990. Chronicle/Marquand.