Clearing up the science on Monarch Butterflies

MACOMB, Ill. — Have you read some of the headlines lately concerning monarch butterflies?

“Monarch Butterflies are Thriving!”

“Monarch Butterflies are Endangered!”

Both headlines (or something similar) recently saturated newsfeeds for Americans. Considering these stories came out about two weeks apart, what is a person to think? Are monarch butterflies OK? Are they in peril? As you may have gathered with headlines like this, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Let’s breakdown each one of these newsmakers.

Starting with the first story to break, “Monarchs are Thriving,” if one were to read beyond the headline you would see it’s not all sunshine for our state insect, but there is good news worth sharing. Entomologists from University of Georgia published results from Community Science data that indicated monarch butterfly populations are able to rebound during the summer in the U.S. and Canada.

You may be asking, “Rebound from what?” We can divide monarch butterflies into two types depending on the time of year. There is the breeding population that migrates north in the spring and hangs out with us in Illinois and onward to Canada all summer. These guys live for about two months, but they continue to mate and lay eggs on milkweed increasing the population.

Once we hit fall, something changes in the monarch butterfly. They shift to being migratory and begin the long journey back to their overwintering site in Mexico. These butterflies may live up to eight months. It is during this journey and at their overwintering site we see a decline in monarch butterfly population. It is believed lack of nectar to fuel these fluttering beauties and habitat loss is a primary cause.

In summary, the summer breeding population of monarch butterflies is thriving and can overcome the migratory losses and repopulate the species. Yet even the authors of the paper acknowledge, resilience has a limit and we do not know the point where the monarch butterfly will not be able to come back.

The second headline declaring the monarch butterfly endangered was made by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This is a well-regarded organization that makes global declarations on the status of wildlife species.

For instance, if you would look up the India cheetah, you would see the IUCN has deemed it as endangered. The same goes for many of the species seen as endangered around the globe. So this declaration does bear weight, but what does it mean for us in the United States? Well, nothing. The legislation that guides the US in dealing with endangered species is the Endangered Species Act of 1973. If the monarch butterfly would be listed on this, protections would go into effect for the monarch butterfly.

So why doesn’t the U.S. list the monarch butterfly as endangered? It would be bad for most of us, even me on occasion. Monarchs are everywhere. It truly is a North American species. A federally protected monarch means the habitat is protected. We couldn’t kill a milkweed plant, because it is the only thing a monarch caterpillar eats. And milkweed grows everywhere! We would no longer be able to use monarch butterflies as teaching tools in schools, rear them indoors, and many more implications.

So how do we keep the monarch butterfly off the U.S. endangered species list while still helping?

Create, manage, and preserve more habitat. Especially, habitat providing good fall nectar sources for our migrating monarchs. If you can’t build a pollinator garden, support organizations that do. University of Illinois Extension actively builds and supports monarch butterfly habitat and research.