Photo Credit: Left: Adult monarchs nectaring on showy milkweed. Photo: Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Center: Overwintering cluster of monarchs in eucalyptus. Photo: Candace Fallon/The Xerces Society Right: Fifth instar monarch caterpillar feeding on showy milkweed. Photo: Idaho Department of Fish and Game
February 6, 2019 - The Western Monarch Butterfly Conservation PlanMonarch Butterfly Conservation Plan has been released.
Check out this call to action and learn what's needed to help the species persist.
Source: Sacramento USFWS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The monarch butterfly is one of the most familiar and charismatic insects of North America, renowned for its distinctive migratory phenomena and reliance on milkweed, the monarch’s larval host plant. Once widespread and common throughout its range, populations have undergone significant declines. The western population of monarchs that breeds west of the Rocky Mountains and largely overwinters in coastal California has declined 74% since the late 1990s. The much larger eastern population that breeds east of the Rockies and overwinters in Mexico has declined at a similar rate...
Credit: Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. 2019. Western monarch butterfly conservation plan, 2019– 2069. Version 1.0.
