Broad Coalition Supports Petition to Protect Monarch Butterflies

The world's population of Monarch butterflies has been declining for at least the last ten years, according to researchers at the University of Kansas. Some estimates suggest a 90 percent drop since 1994.

Scientific studies by the University of Kansas, University of Guelph, and others point to the increasing use of Monsanto's herbicide Roundup and the rise of genetically modified crops (GMOs) designed to resist such herbicides as one possible cause of the decline.

Monsanto focuses on farmers' choice to use its products and has launched a PR campaign to portray itself as a leading protector of pollinators like bees and butterflies, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported.

CMD joined more than 40 leading scientists and 200 other groups and companies in urging Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to list Monarch butterflies as threatened and protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

CMD and others signaled their support of a formal petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed in August seeking federal protection for monarchs. The petition was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower.

Monarchs are currently moving towards Michoacan, Mexico in their annual migration from as far north as Ontario, Canada. They were most recently spotted in Texas. They can fly up to 265 miles in a day. But while about a billion monarchs participated in this migration in the mid-1990s, just 33.5 million were spotted last winter, the lowest number ever recorded.

Larissa Walker, pollinator program director at the Center for Food Safety -- a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting public health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies -- said, "The extensive use of the herbicide glyphosate on genetically engineered crops has all but wiped out milkweed in crucial monarch breeding areas. If we have any hope of saving monarchs, our agricultural practices must be at the forefront of the conversation."