Western Monarchs are in Trouble!
Every winter since 1997, volunteers have counted the monarchs wintering along the California Coast. As you can see in the graph below, this winter the count (9,119) was the second lowest in 28 years (the green bars), even though the number of sites monitored (the blue line) has gone up over the years.
To put the graph above in perspective, even last year’s overwintering population of 200,000 is only about 5% of its size in the 1980s, which is what scientists consider to be a stable population level. So here is what that graph looks like:
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I remember seeing the overwintering monarchs when I was a kid in the late 60s. There were so many monarchs on the trees that you could not see the leaves or the branches. I guess they were too many to count back then and no one thought they needed to be counted. Kind of like the passenger pigeons. The western monarchs need help now! In December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. When finalized, the decision is expected to provide vital support for the species including improved protection for overwintering habitat in California, greater focus by federal agencies on the species, and more incentives for breeding habitat restoration. Before Mar 12, please go to this website to add your comments during the public comment period, or you can sign a letter from the Xerces Society to support the listing. For helping the monarchs locally, please reply or fill out the Contact form on our website if you are willing to volunteer with our group to steward the few remaining patches of native milkweed in our area. We also encourage you to plant native milkweed on your property. We provide free seeds at our meetings. Milkweed has a taproot, so grow it in tall pots or seed directly in the ground, making sure to control all surrounding vegetation and irrigate for the first few years. |