The latest monarch butterfly count found that the population poised to migrate through the United States rebounded from last year’s record low — but still ranks second-lowest on record.
Monarch numbers increased to 56.5 million from 33.5 million, according to data collected by the World Wildlife Fund and announced Tuesday by Mexico’s government.
“When you consider that in the mid-1990s the population was 1 billion, this is still a pretty low number,” said Sarina Jepsen, endangered species program director for the Xerces Society, a conservation group leading rescue efforts. “Monarchs are really in trouble.”
In August, species and food security groups pointed to monarchs’ sharp decline over two decades in petitioning the federal government to protect them as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
But legal protection can take years. An emerging strategy, backed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calls for creating milkweed safe havens and butterfly highways.
They are victims of prairie conversion and increasing use of herbicides on genetically modified crops, which kill milkweed and other plants that serve as habitat for pollinators.
Colorado residents, working with groups such as the Xerces Society and Kansas-based Monarch Watch, are planting native milkweed. In Thornton this week, Joni Goodwin and neighbors at East Lake Estates were looking for the right seeds to put milkweed on seven open acres – near where they spotted monarchs last year, Goodwin said.
“I hate to see anything go away that is so beautiful and functional and belongs here,” Goodwin said.
