Monarch Butterflies Qualify for Endangered List. They Still Won’t Be Protected

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/climate/monarch-butterflies-endangered-species-list.html

Source:  By Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: The monarch butterfly is threatened with extinction, but will not come under federal protection because other species are a higher priority, federal officials announced Tuesday. ...But their numbers have been decimated by climate-change-fueled weather events and pervasive habitat loss in the United States. ...The number of Eastern monarchs — which undertake an astonishing, multigenerational migration from as far north as Canada to overwinter in central Mexico — has declined by 75 percent since the 1990s, scientists estimate. Across the Rocky Mountains, Western monarchs have seen an even more alarming drop. Some of this collapse is tied to a need for milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat. Milkweed has declined across monarch breeding grounds throughout the United States since farmers started using crops that are genetically modified to tolerate Roundup, a brand of weedkiller. Milkweed often grew among crops, but cannot survive spraying....  

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