(7 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: El Rosario, Mexico – 27 November 2021
1. Various of Monarch butterfly
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tampa, Florida, U.S. – 3 March 2025
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Nick Haddad, study co-author/entomologist at Michigan State University: ++PARTLY COVERED++
"The trend is linear and downward. So the best we know right now is first, that butterflies have been declining for the last 20 years and that decline is not stopping in our ability to – we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: El Rosario Sanctuary, Michoacan, Mexico – 5 March 2023
3. Various of monarch butterflies in the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tampa, Florida, U.S. – 3 March 2025
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Nick Haddad, study co-author/entomologist at Michigan State University: ++PARTLY COVERED++
"One percent a year, yeah, it doesn’t seem like much. You’re going from 100 butterflies to 99. Most people couldn’t detect that difference. But then when it accumulates year after year and now there are 80 butterflies where there were 100, people can start to notice. And beyond that, the scary part is the trend is downward.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: El Rosario Sanctuary, Michoacan, Mexico – 5 March 2023
5. Various of Monarch butterflies at El Rosario Sanctuary
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tampa, Florida, U.S. – 3 March 2025
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Nick Haddad, study co-author/entomologist at Michigan State University: ++PART OVERLAID++
"We got climate data, temperature, precipitation, land use data, the habitat change and then the pesticide information across all classes of pesticides. And in that study, pesticides rise to the top as the key factor causing decline."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: El Rosario Sanctuary, Michoacan, Mexico – 5 March 2023
7. Various of Monarch butterflies at El Rosario Sanctuary
STORYLINE:
These winged beauties are in danger.
America’s butterflies are disappearing, with numbers down 22% since 2000, according to a new study.
The first ever country-wide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that total number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study published in Thursday’s journal Science (6th March).
The median or midpoint decline of species was 41.5% because a lot of the types of butterflies are dropping fast, skewing the number even higher.
“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” says study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end."
A team of scientists combined 76,957 surveys conducted in 35 monitoring programs and blended them together so an apples-to-apples comparisons could be made and ended up counting 12.6 million butterflies over the decades.
Last month an annual survey that looked just at the signature monarch butterflies, which federal officials plan to put on the threatened species list, counted nearly an all-time low of less than 10,000, down from 1.2 million in 1997.
While annual rates of decline of 1-2% may not sound significant, they are worrying when compounded over time.
"When it accumulates year after year and now there are 80 butterflies where there were 100, people can start to notice," says Haddad.
"The scary part is the trend is downward… We’re going to see fewer and fewer butterflies over time unless we do something," he warns.
However, all is not lost.
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