Current:Home > FinanceWestern monarch butterflies overwintering in California dropped by 30% last year, researchers say-LoTradeCoin
Western monarch butterflies overwintering in California dropped by 30% last year, researchers say
View Date:2025-01-12 21:12:46
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The number of western monarch butterflies overwintering in California dropped by 30% last year, likely due to how wet it was, researchers said Tuesday.
Volunteers who visited sites in California and Arizona around Thanksgiving tallied more than 230,000 butterflies, compared to 330,000 in 2022, according to the Xerces Society, an environmental nonprofit that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates.
The population of orange and black insects has rebounded in recent years to the hundreds of thousands after it plummeted in 2020 to just 2,000 butterflies, which was a record low. But even though the butterfly bounced back, its numbers are still well below what they were in the 1980s, when monarchs numbered in the millions.
Scientists say the butterflies are at critically low levels in western states because of destruction to their milkweed habitat along their migratory route due to housing construction and the increased use of pesticides and herbicides.
Climate change is also one of the main drivers of the monarch’s threatened extinction, disrupting the butterfly’s annual 3,000-mile (4,828-kilometer) migration synched to springtime and the blossoming of wildflowers.
“Climate change is making things harder for a lot of wildlife species, and monarchs are no exception,” said Emma Pelton, a monarch conservation biologist with the Xerces Society. “We know that the severe storms seen in California last winter, the atmospheric rivers back to back, are linked at some level to our changing climate.”
Western monarchs head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter, returning to the same places and even the same trees, where they cluster to keep warm. They breed multiple generations along the route before reaching California, where they generally arrive at in early November. Once warmer weather arrives in March, they spread east of California.
On the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, another monarch population travels from southern Canada and the northeastern United States to central Mexico. Scientists estimate that the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen by about 80% since the mid-1990s, but the drop-off in the western U.S. has been even steeper.
veryGood! (4)
Related
- Biden EPA to charge first-ever ‘methane fee’ for drilling waste by oil and gas companies
- Global economy will slow for a third straight year in 2024, World Bank predicts
- Aid group says 6,618 migrants died trying to reach Spain by boat in 2023, more than double 2022
- Irish singer Sinead O’Connor died from natural causes, coroner says
- 'America's flagship' SS United States has departure from Philadelphia to Florida delayed
- Colts owner Jim Irsay being treated for 'severe respiratory illness'
- When will the IRS accept 2024 returns? Here's when you can start filing your taxes.
- Virginia police identify suspect in 3 cold-case homicides from the 1980s, including victims of the Colonial Parkway Murders
- Monument erected in Tulsa for victims of 1921 Race Massacre
- Italian cake maker in influencer charity scandal says it acted in good faith
Ranking
- Ben Foster Files for Divorce From Laura Prepon After 6 Years of Marriage
- 'The sweetest child': Tyre Nichols remembered a year after fatal police beating
- Wisconsin judge rules that absentee voting van used in 2022 was illegal
- Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore respond to 'May December' inspiration Vili Fualaau's criticism
- Jason Statham Shares Rare Family Photos of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Their Kids on Vacation
- Hottest year ever, what can be done? Plenty: more renewables and nuclear, less methane and meat
- Poland’s new government is in a standoff with the former ruling party over 2 convicted politicians
- Selena Gomez Reveals What She Actually Told Taylor Swift at Golden Globes
Recommendation
-
Opinion: NFL began season with no Black offensive coordinators, first time since the 1980s
-
GE business to fill order for turbines to power Western Hemisphere’s largest wind project
-
Biden courts critical Black voters in South Carolina, decrying white supremacy
-
Aftermath of Sandman Signature Fort Worth Downtown Hotel explosion: See the photos
-
Brands Our Editors Are Thankful For in 2024
-
Colts owner Jim Irsay being treated for severe respiratory illness
-
Hayley Erbert Praises Husband Derek Hough's Major Milestone After Unfathomable Health Battle
-
At Golden Globes, Ayo Edebiri of The Bear thanks her agent's assistants, the people who answer my emails