The Campaign to Save the Nearly One Billion Lost Butterflies – by Dana Driskill

“Save the pandas. Save the polar bears. Save the bald eagles. Some threatened animals will inevitably receive more press than others, but what’s shocking is the lack of dialogue surrounding the disappearance of 970 million monarch butterflies since 1990, an alarming statistic according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. While the causes of the butterflies’ disappearance is unclear, some suspect that it’s due to farmers and homeowners spraying herbicides on milkweed plants, which are crucial to monarch butterflies and serve as their food source and home. To combat and reverse the decline of the lifelines of the monarch butterflies, the Fish and Wildlife Service have started a partnership with the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in order to rapidly grow milkweed and provide new homes and food sources for the remaining monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies used to flutter throughout the United States by the billions. Only about 30 million remain, and they alone complete the trek each spring from Mexico to Canada, which takes six generations of the insect to make the journey. Afterward, young monarchs, about the quarter of the weight of a dime, fly back to Canada.”