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Saturday, June 5th, 2021

Western monarch butterflies are nearly extinct. California has a plan to save them

Author:     Erin McCormick
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Fri 4 Jun 2021 11.57 EDT
 Link: Western monarch butterflies are nearly extinct. California has a plan to save them
Stephan:   When I left university I was offered a position with National Geographic, and the first story I was assigned was about the migration of Monarch butterflies, It is an astonishing story I have never forgotten. The butterflies fly for thousands of miles stopping in the same trees their parents stopped in. When a tree is cut down the next generation picks a new tree and every generation thereafter of that genetic line stops in that same tree, on their migration. How can they possibly know? That story of the monarchs and their migration was what aw2akened me to the reality there was some kind of connection amongst the monarchs that had nothing to do with their tiny brains, and that realization grew ultimately to the realization that all life is nonlocally connected and interdependent. Now because of human stupidity and greed, the monarchs have been pushed to the edge of extinction. However, there is some good news. At the last-minute California under Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom aided by a collection of conservation groups, and Californians is taking responsibility for what humans have done and is trying to rectify it.

In one of the biggest mobilizationsof resources and talent ever organized to save an insect, the state of California is teaming with conservation groups, biologists and scores of citizen scientists to rescue the western monarch butterfly from the brink of extinction.

To do this, they are placing their hopes on an unassuming, poisonous plant called milkweed.

Monarch butterflies, known for their distinctive orange and black pattern, once flocked to California in the millions, spending the winter clumped on trees as they migrated to and from the state’s central coast.

But the population has sharply declined from 4.5 million in the 1980s, dropping to nearly 200,000 in recent decades before taking a precipitous dive in 2018. That year, the population fell to nearly 30,000, and when volunteers counted again in November, it had dropped to fewer than 2,000 – representing a 99% collapse in the last three decades.

“It was really grim,” saysAngela Laws, an endangered species conservation biologist with the Xerces Society, which conducts the November population counts using an army of volunteer naturalists.

“It’s alarming that the numbers are so low. But we […]

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