After blow after blow, this is a much-needed piece of good news. But scientists warn that there is still a long road ahead and one good year doesn’t mean that butterflies are recovering.
Hey John — we assume you’ve heard about the plight of North American butterflies. According to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, fewer than 30,000 butterflies were counted at their conservatory sites in 2019. That represents more than a 99% decline in butterflies [!!] since the 1980s.
But researchers at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History are offering us a small glimmer of hope. After spying no butterfly clusters at their sanctuary last year, this year they have already counted 2,500 monarch butterflies.
After blow after blow, this is a much-needed piece of good news. But scientists warn that there is still a long road ahead, and one good year doesn’t mean that butterflies are recovering.
Saving the butterflies will be a long-term project; there’s no doubt about that. That’s why we are asking all of our supporters: Do you think Congress should take action to save the butterflies?
We can’t spend much time celebrating, John. The experts are still sounding the alarm:
“We just never make much out of one year’s worth of data,” Matt Forister, an insect ecologist and professor at the University of Nevada said. “If we get a few years like this, that’ll be awesome. But if you look at the long-term trajectory of the monarchs and most other butterflies in the West, you’ve got this slow downward spiral with lots of ups and downs.
If we are going to save the butterflies we can’t just have one good year. We need to stop the “downward spiral.” But it will be a lot of work, and we need to know what our core supporters think.
Should Congress take action to save the butterflies?
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