Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

A First Look at Fresno State’s Quarterback Battle

3 days ago

Israeli Columnist Alleges Ethnic Cleansing Plan in Gaza

3 days ago

Tesla to Roll out Bay Area Robotaxis With Safety Drivers, Report Says

3 days ago

Thailand and Cambodia Exchange Heavy Artillery Fire as Border Battle Expands

3 days ago

California Cannot Require Background Checks to Buy Ammunition, US Appeals Court Rules

4 days ago

TikTok Will Go Dark in US Without Chinese Approval of Sale Deal, Lutnick Says

4 days ago

Fresno County Authorities Still Searching for Missing Mother and Infant

4 days ago
When Was the Last Time You Saw a Monarch Butterfly?
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 6 years ago on
August 14, 2019

Share

GREENBELT, Md. — Hand-raising monarch butterflies in the midst of a global extinction crisis, Laura Moore and her neighbors gather round in her suburban Maryland yard to launch a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis. Eager to play his part, 3-year-old Thomas Powell flaps his arms and exclaims, “I’m flying! I’m flying!”
Moore moves to release the hours-old monarch onto the boy’s outstretched finger, but the butterfly, its wings a vivid orange and black, has another idea. It banks away, beginning its new life up in the green shelter of a nearby tree.
Monarchs are in trouble, despite efforts by Moore and countless other volunteers and organizations across the United States to nurture the beloved butterfly. The Trump administration’s new order weakening the Endangered Species Act could well make things worse for the monarch, one of more than 1 million species that are struggling around the globe.
Rapid development and climate change are escalating the rates of species loss, according to a May United Nations report. For monarchs, farming and other human development have eradicated state-size swaths of native milkweed habitat, cutting the butterfly’s numbers by 90% over the past two decades.
With its count falling 99% to the low tens of thousands in the western United States last year, the monarch is now under government consideration for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. But if the Trump administration’s latest action survives threatened legal challenges, there will be sweeping changes to how the government provides protections, and which creatures receive them.

Another Change Will End Across-the-Board Protections

Administration officials say the changes, expected to go into effect next month, will reduce regulation while still protecting animals and plants. But conservation advocates and Democratic lawmakers say the overhaul will force more to extinction, delaying and denying protections.

Another coming change will end across-the-board protections for creatures newly listed as threatened. Conservation groups say that will leave them unprotected for months or years, as officials, conservationists and industries and landowners hash out each species’ survival plan, case by case.
The administration will for the first time reserve the option to estimate and publicize the financial cost of saving a species in advance of any decision on whether to do so. Monarchs compete for habitat with soybean and corn farmers, whose crops are valued in the low tens of billions of dollars annually. For mountain caribou, sage grouse, the Humboldt marten in California’s old-growth redwoods and other creatures, it’s logging, oil and gas development, ranching, and other industry driving struggling species out of their ranges.
Another coming change will end across-the-board protections for creatures newly listed as threatened. Conservation groups say that will leave them unprotected for months or years, as officials, conservationists and industries and landowners hash out each species’ survival plan, case by case.
The rule also will limit consideration of threats facing a species to the “foreseeable” future, which conservation groups say allows the administration to ignore the growing harm of global warming. Along with farming, climate change is one of the main drivers of the monarch’s threatened extinction, disrupting an annual 3,000-mile migration synched to springtime and the blossoming of wildflowers. In 2002, a single wet storm followed by a freeze killed an estimated 450 million monarchs in their winter home in Mexico, piling wings inches deep on a forest floor.
A decision on whether the monarch will be listed as threatened is expected by December 2020.
Photo of monarch butterfly silhouette
A monarch butterfly is silhouetted suspended near its empty chrysalis soon after emerging in Washington, Sunday, June 2, 2019. Farming and other human development have eradicated state-size swaths of its native milkweed habitat, cutting the butterfly’s numbers by 90% over the last two decades. It is now under considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

‘Monarchs Connect People to Nature’

In the meantime, volunteers like Moore grow plants to feed and host the monarchs, nurture caterpillars, and tag and count monarchs on the insects’ annual migrations up and down America. While wildlife experts encourage the growing of milkweed, some are doubtful about the common practice of raising monarchs from their chrysalis out of concern it allows less healthy butterflies to survive.

“One of the reasons I think it’s so important to focus on monarch conservation is monarchs connect people to nature. They’re beautiful, they’re impressive, people have seen them since we were children.” — Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum
For Moore, a tutor who has turned her 20-by-20-foot yard over to milkweed, fleabane and other butterfly nectar and host plants, the hope is that grass-roots efforts of thousands of volunteers loosely connected in wildlife organizations, schools, and Facebook groups will save the monarch, at least.
“People having an interest in it might reverse it. It’s encouraging,” said Moore, who also raises extra milkweed to give away. If the monarch can’t be saved, she said, “it would be kind of sad. What it would say about what we’re able to do.”
Some animals — like a shy mountain caribou species that went extinct from the wild in the lower 48 states last winter, despite protection under the Endangered Species Act — struggle and disappear out of sight. Monarchs can serve as reminders of the others, says Karen Oberhauser, director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, and a conservation biologist who has studied monarchs since 1984. That was before a boom in soybeans, corn and herbicide wiped out milkweed in pastures converted to row crops.
“One of the reasons I think it’s so important to focus on monarch conservation is monarchs connect people to nature,” Oberhauser said. “They’re beautiful, they’re impressive, people have seen them since we were children.”
“If the changes that humans are causing are leading to the decline of species that are as common as the monarchs, it’s scary,” Oberhauser said. “The environment is changing such a lot that monarchs are declining. And I think that doesn’t bode well for humans.”

Monarch’s Seemingly Vulnerable Life Cycle Is a Mystery

The Interior Department did not provide comment for this article about the plight of the monarch despite repeated requests.
For corn and soybean farmer Wayne Fredericks in Osage, Iowa, the monarch’s seemingly vulnerable life cycle is a mystery.
“Who would design a little creature that depends on one weed? Overwinters in one little spot?” Fredericks asks.
He takes part in federal government programs that pay farmers to seed islands of native wildflowers and grasses on their land. Coming through the corn rows on his 750 acres this spring, Fredericks is thrilled to see the full result: Orange and black wings fluttering among seeded prairie flowers.
“This year, it is just awesome,” He says.
As farmers, however, “we’ve evolved to have clean fields,” and have used tractors, potent weed killers, and weedkiller resistant crops to make them that way, Fredericks said. “And unfortunately it killed the milkweed.”
Butterflies are pretty, he said, but persuading farmers to work around aggressively spreading milkweed will take money. “When it’s made economical sense to do so, it happened right away,” he said.
For farmer Nancy Kavazanjian, who includes solar panels and patches of pollinator-friendly wildflowers amid her corn, soybean and wheat in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, “If we’re going to be sustainable, we have to pay the bills.”

‘We’re Trying to Do What We Can’

Should supporters win federal protections for monarchs and their milkweed habitat, “the devil is in the details, isn’t it?” Kavazanjian said. “The wording and the enforcement and you know, I mean, again, if invasive species meets endangered species, then what happens?”
“We’re trying to do what we can,” said Richard Wilkins, a Delaware grower who shuns the federal farm habitat programs, but hopes that leaving what weeds and wildflowers survive in hard-to-mow areas helps the wildlife. “I think you’ll find there’s lots of farmers” who feel that way.
For Oberhauser, the Wisconsin biologist, “it’s really important here we not blame farmers.”
“What we need instead of pointing fingers is, we need to make up for that,” as with the programs that pull unproductive lands out of farming and into set-aside patches for wildlife, she said.
In the U.S. West, where monarchs spend the winter rather than migrate to Mexico, their numbers have plummeted from 4.5 million in the 1980s to fewer than 30,000 last winter.
Tierra Curry, an Oregon-based senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity conservation advocacy group, said because the monarch was once so common, most people her age — early 40s — believe “there’s no way monarchs can be endangered.”
But for her 14-year-old son, it’s already almost a post-monarch world. Despite the more than a dozen milkweed plants that the family plants in their yard, “we haven’t seen one yet,” she said.

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

DON'T MISS

Trump, EU’s Von Der Leyen to Meet on Sunday to Clinch Trade Deal

DON'T MISS

Israel Announces Daily Pauses in Gaza Fighting as Aid Airdrops Begin

DON'T MISS

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

DON'T MISS

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

DON'T MISS

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

DON'T MISS

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

DON'T MISS

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

DON'T MISS

Grand Rising Brings Sober Day Party Vibes to Fresno

DON'T MISS

Jack McAuliffe, Who Started a Craft Beer Revolution, Dies at 80

UP NEXT

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

UP NEXT

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

UP NEXT

US Judge Reaffirms Nationwide Injunction Blocking Trump Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship

UP NEXT

White House Will Release $5.5 Billion for Schools, After Surprise Delay

UP NEXT

US States to Get $608 Million From FEMA to Build Migrant Detention Centers

UP NEXT

Trump: Strong Dollar Sounds Good but ‘You Make a Hell of a Lot More’ With a Weaker One

UP NEXT

Trump Says US May Not Have a Negotiated Trade Deal With Canada

UP NEXT

Trump Says There Is a 50-50 Chance of Trade Deal With EU

UP NEXT

Amid Epstein Furor, Ghislaine Maxwell Seeks Relief From US Supreme Court

UP NEXT

US Justice Department Official Meets Epstein Associate Maxwell

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

2 days ago

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

2 days ago

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

2 days ago

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

2 days ago

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

2 days ago

Grand Rising Brings Sober Day Party Vibes to Fresno

2 days ago

Jack McAuliffe, Who Started a Craft Beer Revolution, Dies at 80

2 days ago

Fresno Crash Leaves One Dead After Car Submerges in Canal

2 days ago

Lemoore Farmers Fed Up With Lack of Representation on Groundwater Agency

2 days ago

‘Jenny from the Block’ Rescued After Camping Out by Calwa ATM

2 days ago

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

A 20-year-old man was arrested early Saturday morning after leading officers on a pursuit into Tulare County, authorities said. Just after 1...

22 hours ago

Visalia police arrested a 20-year-old man with multiple felony warrants early Saturday after he fled a DUI traffic stop, leading officers on a pursuit into Tulare County that ended with spike strips and a CHP PIT maneuver. (Visalia PD)
22 hours ago

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2020. (Reuters File)
22 hours ago

Trump, EU’s Von Der Leyen to Meet on Sunday to Clinch Trade Deal

Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025. (Reuters/Dawoud Abu Alkas)
22 hours ago

Israel Announces Daily Pauses in Gaza Fighting as Aid Airdrops Begin

The entire board of Highlands Community Charter in Sacramento stepped down after a state audit found the school improperly received over $180 million and engaged in questionable spending. (Shutter
2 days ago

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

The NASA logo is seen at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 16, 2021. (Reuters File)
2 days ago

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and French President Emmanuel Macron visit a ward for Palestinian patients at El Arish Hospital, close to the border with the Gaza Strip, in Arish, Egypt April 8, 2025. Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS
2 days ago

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

U.S. President Donald Trump golfs at Trump Turnberry resort in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 26, 2025. (Reuters/Phil Noble)
2 days ago

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

Noah Robinson, 38, was arrested after allegedly robbing a Visalia Long John Silver’s at knifepoint and attempting to flee through nearby backyards with $110 in stolen cash on Friday, July 25, 2025. (Visalia PD)
2 days ago

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend