Scientists say the drop is linked to the destruction of monarchs’ only habitat and food supply: the milkweed plant.
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In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the monarch butterflies will make a pit stop for their yearly migration. One such group is the Brukner Nature Center in Troy, Ohio. Rut Bowell, the event organizer, stated that the celebration of this festival will let people know the travails that the butterflies are facing. She called the majestic butterflies as the canaries in the prairie.
Under a joint project of the David Suzuki Foundation and the University of Guelph, experts will also spread public awareness on the life cycle of the butterfly. “To preserve the spectacular monarch migration, we must act quickly, rather than spend years in deliberation as the crisis worsens”.
Awareness of the decline in the population of the monarch, according to what the nature center believes could encourage people to realize and investigate the experience of other pollinators and, therefore, their population decline. The event also had other attractions which included games and crafts.
A number of studies have shown that monarch butterfly is a threatened species whose population is declining rapidly.
The organizers have also installed a butterfly tent where families can interact with different free-roaming butterflies.
Brukner executive director Deb Oexmann explained that various organizations have started events around the monarch butterflies this year because of the sharp decline in their populations in the past five years.
“The monarch population that overwinters in Mexico has plummeted more than 90 percent in two decades-it is a perilous decline”, said Rebecca Riley, an attorney with NRDC, who is attending the UNESCO meeting in Bonn, in an interview with NRDC. Visitors were also told of ways to track butterflies by tagging them. The US has seen growth of the milkweed plant on a steady decline, a trend that can be directly correlated to the growing use of pesticides that contain the chemical Glyphosate.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), one of the causes of the predicament these insects find themselves in is the decline in milkweed, a plant that’s vital for the caterpillar’s diet.
To help provide ample amount of milkweed for the monarchs, many concerned organizations are working together to collect milkweed seeds during fall and sowing them in different areas.
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The North American butterflies, known for their famous orange and black stripes, have spent 3 months travelling south, by spending the winters in the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve sanctuaries in Mexico.
