The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a proposal to protect America’s monarch butterfly population, encouraging the public to help in the species’ recovery. Right now, the USFWS is seeking public input on the proposal to list the butterfly as threatened under section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act, creating species-specific protections and flexibilities to encourage conservation.
The monarch butterfly used to be everywhere, with over 4.5 million western monarchs making their way to overwintering grounds in coastal California every year in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, an estimated 380 million eastern monarchs made the long migration to their overwintering grounds in Mexico.
Today, the eastern migratory population is believed to have declined by approximately 80% and the western by more than 95%. With that decline, the western populations have a 99% chance of extinction by 2080, and the eastern population between 56 to 74% in the same period.
A full proposal to list the monarch butterfly will be published on December 12, 2024, in the Federal Register. Once the proposal has been published, a 90-day comment period will open, set to close on March 12, 2025, with comments submitted on Regulations.org. Read more on the proposal and how to submit comments here.