Tell US Fish and Wildlife—Include Monarchs as Threatened Under Endangered Species Act

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

Bees aren’t the only pollinators at risk.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), we’ve lost 970 million monarch butterflies since their peak in the 1990s.¹

That’s a decline of 90 percent of the monarch population. It would be as if we lost every living person in the U.S. except for residents of Ohio and Florida. As The Washington Post put it, what’s happening to the monarchs is nothing short of a massacre.²

Monarchs could be headed for extinction if we don’t act. Tell the FWS to list monarchs as threatened under the Endangered Species Act at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=35041.

Researchers have estimated that the North American monarch population stands a 72 percent chance of going extinct in the next 20 years if the current trend isn’t reversed.³

That’s why listing them as threatened Endangered Species Act is critical. When it comes to preventing extinction, the Act has a 99 percent success rate, bringing species such as California condors and Florida panthers back from the brink.⁴

The FWS was supposed to make a determination on whether or not to grant monarchs threatened status this past May, but chose to kick the can down the road, punting its decision deadline by more than a year.⁵

And all the while, monarch butterflies continue to die.

How many more monarchs have to die off before we protect them? Join the call to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

Thank you for taking action.

1. Joanna Gilkeson, “Monarch Numbers Increase, But Work To Restore Butterflies Is Not Over,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, February 26, 2016.
2. Darryl Fears, “The monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished,” The Washington Post, February 9, 2015.
3. Laura M. Holson, “With 86% Drop, California’s Monarch Butterfly Population Hits Record Low,” The New York Times, January 9, 2019.
4. “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA Propose Actions to Build on Successes of Endangered Species Act,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, May 18, 2015.
5. “Assessing the Status of the Monarch Butterfly,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, last accessed October 11, 2019.