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Appropriate vegetation management in semi-natural grasslands can provide important habitats for grassland species. However, an increasing number of semi-natural grasslands are being abandoned worldwide due to changes in lifestyle and resource use, which has resulted in a drastic decline in grassland-dependent species. Ski pistes can function as important habitats for various grassland flora and fauna, but they have been increasingly closed because of climate change and population decline. However, it remains unclear how the abandonment of pistes affects biodiversity. Here, we examined how butterfly communities change with time since the abandonment of pistes in Japan. We assessed the species richness and abundance of grassland, ruderal, and forest butterflies; vegetation height; and the amount of food resources for larval and adult butterflies on both abandoned and active pistes. We then …