The alarming decline of the monarch butterfly population necessitates federal action to save the iconic orange and black pollinators.
Such is the urging of the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety, joined by the Xerces Society and monarch expert Dr. Lincoln Brower, who sent a petition (pdf) Tuesday to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the butterflies.
Over the last two decades, the groups say, population has plummeted by more than 90 percent. To put that “staggering” figure in perspective, Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that “in human-population terms it would be like losing every living person in the United States except those in Florida and Ohio.”
The request for federal protection follows stacking evidence against corporate agriculture for its role in these declining numbers. A primary threat to the pollinators, the petition states, is widespread plantings in the Midwest of genetically modified crops and the herbicides used on them, which are wiping out the monarch’s larval food, milkweed.
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