Since the start of the 2017-18 monarch butterfly overwintering season in November, nearly 30,000 people have wandered through the Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, including more than 2,000 schoolchildren, says Nick Stong, education programs manager with the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. About the same number of people showed up this year as last, but the butterflies are way down. This season the peak was 7,350 – a 57-percent drop from last year.
While Stong says comparing insect numbers from one year to the next does not indicate a problem, he’s alarmed at the trend for all monarchs in the Northern Hemisphere. The nonprofit Xerces Society announced Feb. 2 that monarch populations are at their lowest point in five years. Volunteers during the society’s annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count visited more sites than ever since the count began in 1997, and yet the tally was fewer than 200,000, down 100,000 from the previous season.
With scientists sounding the alarm of a possible extinction if no action is taken to protect the monarchs – one estimate gives extinction a 72-percent chance – Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, introduced AB 2421 on Feb. 14. If passed, the bill would create the Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Protection Program, providing funds and technical assistance to restore monarch habitats across the state. Money would be used to restore California inland prairie areas, where butterflies feed on milkweed, as well as protect overwintering sites along the coast.
Editor's note: the print version of this story had Nick Stong's name misspelled as Nick Strong.