Opinion: The monarch butterfly's endangered status doesn't carry much weight. Here's why. [Opinion]
This is an important difference because the listing by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature carries no obligation of changes in policy — whereas a listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would. As importantly, it was not the monarch butterfly as a species that was listed, but only the migratory subspecies of the monarch, known as Danaus plexipus plexipus.
I first traveled to the overwintering sites of the eastern monarch 32 years ago. There, the trees themselves were completely covered in butterflies from the top to the bottom, with tree branches and trunks nothing but shivering butterflies. Standing at the feet of evenly spaced ancient oyamel fir trees brought to life by millions of fluttering butterflies easily puts any human-made cathedral to shame.
There are numerous and complex threats to survival of the monarch — rapidly expanding industrial agriculture that is eating up habitats, herbicides that are killing their host plants and insecticides that are killing the butterflies. Climate change is also likely to have a profound but as yet unknown impact on the migration.
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