TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Federal officials on Tuesday declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status, but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation.
Environmentalists said delaying that long could spell disaster for the beloved black-and-orange butterfly, once a common sight in backyard gardens, meadows and other landscapes now seeing its population dwindling.
The monarch’s status will be reviewed annually, said Charlie Wooley, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Great Lakes regional office. Emergency action could be taken earlier, but plans now call for proposing to list the monarch under the Endangered Species Act in 2024 unless its situation improves enough to make the step unnecessary.
The proposal would be followed by another year for public comment and development of a final rule. Listing would provide a number of legal protections, including a requirement that federal agencies consider effects on the butterfly or its habitat before allowing highway construction and other potentially damaging activities.
Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80% since the mid-1990s, while the drop-off in the western U.S. has been even steeper.
“We conducted an intensive, thorough review using a rigorous, transparent science-based process and found that the monarch meets listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith said in a statement. “However, before we can propose listing, we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions.”
Scientists will continue monitoring the butterfly’s numbers and the effectiveness of what Wooley described as perhaps the most widespread grassroots campaign ever waged to save an imperiled animal.
Since 2014, when environmental groups petitioned to list the monarch, school groups, garden clubs, government agencies and others around the nation have restored about 5.6 million acres (nearly 2.3 million hectares) of milkweed plants on which monarchs depend, Wooley said. They lay eggs on the leaves, which caterpillars eat, while adults gather nectar from the flowers.
The volunteer effort “has been phenomenal to see,” he said. “It has made a difference in the long-term survival of monarchs and helped other pollinators that are potentially in trouble.”
But advocacy groups say it has compensated for only a small fraction of the estimated 165 million acres (67 million hectares) of monarch habitat — an area the size of Texas — lost in the past 20 years to development or herbicide applications in cropland.
“Monarchs are too important for us to just plant flowers on roadsides and hope for the best,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They need the comprehensive protection that comes only from the Endangered Species Act, which would save them and so many other beleaguered pollinators that share their habitat.”
The monarch’s plight is part of what the United Nations describes as a worldwide crisis threatening 1 million species — one of every eight on Earth — with extinction because of climate change, development and pollution.
Even so, the Trump administration has listed only 25 species — fewer than any since the act took effect in 1973. The Obama administration added 360.
Trump’s team also has weakened protections for endangered and threatened species in its push for deregulation. Among other changes, it limited consideration of climate change’s effects on animals when evaluating whether they should be listed.
Global warming is one of the biggest dangers to the monarch. It contributes to lengthening droughts and worsening storms that kill many during their annual migration.
About 90% of the world’s monarchs live in North America. Scientists measure their abundance by the size of the areas they occupy in Mexico and California, where they cluster during winter after flying thousands of miles from as far away as Canada.
The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the larger eastern population declined from about 384 million in 1996 to a low of 14 million in 2013 before rebounding somewhat, reaching about 60 million last year.
But the California-based western group dropped from about 1.2 million in 1997 to fewer than 30,000 in 2019. Preliminary survey results this fall have turned up only about 2,000, said Lori Nordstrom, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s assistant regional director.
While such grim prospects qualify the monarch for listing, officials said the law allows delays when the agency has limited resources and must focus on higher-priority cases under consideration.
Species ahead in line might be worse off, or courts might have set deadlines for decisions on them.
The Great Lakes office, which is handling the monarch case, is considering nine others with higher-priority status. They include the little brown bat, the plains spotted skunk, the Illinois chorus frog, the golden-winged warbler, Blanding’s turtle, the Mammoth Springs crayfish, two freshwater mussels and a plant called Hall’s bulrush.
Advocacy groups said 47 species have gone extinct waiting to be listed.
“Protection for monarchs is needed — and warranted — now,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety. “The Biden administration must follow the law and science and protect them.”
Also this week, the Fish and Wildlife Service said the northern spotted owl, listed as threatened in 1990, has declined enough since then to justify downgrading to “endangered” — or in peril of extinction. But it also was placed behind higher-priority cases.
Nordstrom said the timing of the announcements about the monarch and the spotted owl was coincidental and did not represent a trend toward finding species fit for listing yet putting them on a waiting list.
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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this story from Oklahoma City.
Earlier article:
Endangered-species decision expected on beloved butterfly
Trump administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, should receive federal designation as a threatened species.
Stepped-up use of farm herbicides, climate change and destruction of milkweed plants on which they depend have caused a massive decline of the orange-and-black butterflies, which long have flitted over meadows, gardens and wetlands across the U.S.
The drop-off that started in the mid-1990s has spurred a preservation campaign involving schoolchildren, homeowners and landowners, conservation groups, governments and businesses.
Some contend those efforts are enough to save the monarch without federal regulation. But environmental groups say protection under the Endangered Species Act is essential — particularly for populations in the West, where last year fewer than 30,000 remained of the millions that spent winters in California’s coastal groves during the 1980s.
This year’s count, though not yet official, is expected to show only about 2,000 there, said Sarina Jepsen, director of the endangered species program at the Xerces Society conservation group.
“We may be witnessing the collapse of the of the monarch population in the West,” Jepsen said.
Scientists separately estimate up to an 80% monarch decline since the mid-1990s in the eastern U.S., although numbers there have shown a recent uptick.
The Trump administration has rolled back protections for endangered and threatened species in its push for deregulation, even as the United Nations says 1 million species — one of every eight on Earth — face extinction because of climate change, development and other human causes.
Under a court agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must respond by Tuesday to a 2014 petition from conservation groups on behalf of the monarch.
The agency could propose or decline to list the butterfly as threatened, which means likely to become in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future throughout all or much of its range. Or it could find that a such listing is deserved but other species have a higher priority, which might delay action indefinitely.
A recommendation to designate the butterfly as threatened would be followed by a yearlong period to take public comment and reach a final decision.
Listing it “would guarantee that the monarch would get a comprehensive recovery plan and ongoing funding,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The monarch is so threatened that this is the only prudent thing to do.”
If the status is granted, federal agencies would have to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about potential harm to monarchs from actions proposed for government funding or permitting, such as expanding interstate highways. The service would prescribe other measures in a regulation tailored specifically for the butterfly.
Orley “Chip” Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas, agreed the butterfly’s long-term prognosis is grim but said he opposes a federal listing for now, fearing it would sour many rural residents on helping the monarch.
“There’s a palpable fear of regulation out there,” he said, adding that voluntary measures should be given additional time.
Monarchs in southern Canada and the eastern U.S. migrate by the millions to mountainous areas of Mexico each winter, while those west of the continental divide head to coastal California. They congregate so thickly in forests that scientists can estimate their numbers through aerial inspections of trees with an orange hue.
Worsening droughts are reducing the number that survive the journey south for winter, Taylor said, while rising temperatures prompt the butterflies to leave their wintering grounds too soon, damaging reproduction. As the forests dry out, wildfire risk worsens.
If habitat losses and climate change aren’t slowed, “we aren’t going to have a monarch migration in 30 years,” Taylor said.
Environmental groups say 165 million acres (67 million hectares) of monarch habitat — an area the size of Texas — have been lost in the past 20 years to development or herbicide applications in cropland. They point to heavy farm use of Round Up, or glyphosate, in particular.
Genetically modified corn and soybeans can withstand the poisons, but they wipe out milkweed, on which the butterflies lay their eggs. Caterpillars feed only on milkweed leaves, while adults eat nectar from their flowers and pollinate the plants.
Federal protection for the monarch would draw stiff resistance from agriculture groups concerned that habitat protection rules might interfere with farm operations.
Milkweed can reduce crop yields and sicken livestock that eat it, “so farmers have spent decades trying to get rid of it,” said Laura Campbell of the Michigan Farm Bureau, which has participated in a statewide monarch recovery program. “It’s a hard sell to tell farmers, ‘Hey, you need to start planting milkweed again.’”
Some farmers and ranchers have planted milkweed on lands set aside for conservation. Numerous organizations and individuals are working to restore monarch habitat, focusing on backyard gardens as well as highway and utility corridors.
“But a lot is happening that’s taking away habitat at the same time,” said Karen Oberhauser, a restoration ecologist and arboretum director at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It’s like we’re running fast but staying in the same place.”
Twenty-five years ago, the 6-year-old son of a chemist named Jim Edward just happened to catch a monarch tagged by Oberhauser’s researchers, when the butterfly wandered into Edward’s yard in Minnesota.
Since then, captivated by the butterfly and its complex migration over generations, Edward has raised monarchs to tell and show hundreds of school groups about the unending migrations.
“Just the exposure of kids to that, that don’t necessarily get to see” wildlife otherwise, he said. “Their enthusiasm, their joy, their ‘oh, wowness’ — to see that.”
Some enthusiasts fear they could no longer harvest eggs and raise monarchs if the species gains federal protections. Curry said her group has recommended that careful, small-scale, noncommercial raising be allowed.
Sheila Naylor, a substitute teacher near Sedalia, Mo., says the chance discovery of a milkweed plant in her yard five years ago inspired a quest to grow the monarch’s host plant in every available inch of yard and roadside.
She visits the Missouri state fair, schools and elder care homes, pleading the case for preserving monarch and other native butterflies.
“I push myself,” Naylor said, “because the butterflies keep me going.”
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Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan. Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.