After years of decline, nearly 250,000 monarch butterflies descended on the Pacific Coast this winter. The more than 100-fold increase over the previous year offers an encouraging sign. But the butterfly's bumper year may not herald a long-term comeback.
North America’s most famous butterfly is back. But will it last?
After years of decline, nearly 250,000 monarch butterflies descended upon the Pacific Coast this winter. The more than 100-fold increase over the previous year’s total, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, offers an encouraging sign for the growing community of monarch admirers working to save the iconic insect. It’s the highest tally since 2016.But the butterfly’s bumper year may not herald a long-term comeback. Insect populations can fluctuate wildly year to year.
Hundreds of other butterfly species are disappearing across the American West as the region becomes drier and hotter. Butterflies and other pollinating insects play a key role in sustaining both crops and wild plants.But the recent monarch sightings have rekindled hope. Dozens of scientists, activists and everyday folks are planting pit stops for the western monarch as it makes its epic annual migration from as far away as British Columbia to overwintering groves on the California coast.
Now retired, she runs a grass-roots group called the Pollinator Posse that teaches both children and adults about insect conservation.Children chase monarchs in a pollinator garden in Lake Merritt in Oakland, Calif, in March 2021.Tora Rocha, co-founder of Oakland's Pollinator Posse, teaches children about butterflies.Biology teacher Terry Smith, co-founder of the Pollinator Posse, helps children search for monarch eggs in milkweed.
When “one gorgeous, big monarch” finally showed up a few miles from the ranch last September, she took off running. “I wanted to get a picture, and I wanted to see what it was going to land on,” she said.Heather Bernikoff heads out in July 2021 to water pollinator plants such as milkweed on her ranch in Catheys Valley, Calif.Melina Mara/The Washington Post
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