MISSION, Texas (Border Report) — Monarch butterflies could be elevated to “threatened” species as proposed this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but some officials in Texas say that would interfere with ranches and businesses and hurt the economy.
“Our beloved monarchs are in trouble, and they need our help. Migratory monarchs in North America are declining at a worrisome pace, and are projected to continue declining over the next 60 years,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a video posted by the agency this week.
That’s why the agency is “announcing a proposal to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species with species-specific protections and flexibilities within the Endangered Species Act. These flexibilities allow us to tailor protections to prevent the further decline of the species and help facilitate recovery, all while enabling continued and important economic activities,” Williams said.
But Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller balked at the announcement calling it “federal government overreach” and said it will wreck havoc on the Lone Star State’s economy.
“Don’t be misled. This proposal isn’t about protecting butterflies. It’s about out-of-touch and out-of-control Washington bureaucrats forcing a radical agenda that punishes rural America and the people who call it home,” Miller said in a statement. “This designation would slap widespread restrictions on anything that might ‘disturb’ monarch habitat, making it nearly impossible to build or expand in rural areas.”
“This is not a balanced approach to conservation; it’s a roadblock to growth, jobs, and prosperity, all in the name of feel-good policies. We deserve better,” Miller said.
But Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, told Border Report on Thursday that Miller’s statements “is a bunch of hot air.” She said he is misleading and “so overblown.”
Curry in 2014 first filed a petition by her nonprofit asking Fish and Wildlife to list the monarch’s as a threatened species.
Butterflies land on branches at Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Calif., on Nov. 10, 2021. (AP File Photo/Nic Coury)
Curry says the designation will not enact overbearing regulations “because monarchs are so very widespread that there’s not going to be the kind of regulations put into place that affect every monarch in every place all of the time. It’s going to be tailored to support the migration, and a lot of activities are going to be exempted, like handling monarchs, hitting monarchs with your car, doing good things to try to get more milkweed to come up. So it’s not the heavy-handed regulation that they are saying it’s going to be.”
Exempting vehicle strikes from the regulation is specified in the Federal Register proposal that posted Thursday.
But capturing of clusters and possessing captively raised monarchs is prohibited, according to the proposal listed in the Federal Register. So is limiting the number of monarchs for scientific research and educational activities to 250 or fewer per year, as well as limiting the sale of captively raised monarchs to 250 or fewer per year.
Some companies raise monarchs for release during funerals and weddings and Curry says these captively-bred insects tend to contain diseases that hurt the wild monarch population and she says that business should stop.
There are two wildlife populations of migrating monarch butterflies in North America: those east of the Rocky Mountains, which fly over the Southwest border — most through South Texas — to overwinter in the mountains of central Mexico, and those that migrate west of the Rocky Mountains and overwinter in coastal California.
Williams says the eastern population has declined by about 80% and the western migrating population in North America has declined by 90%.
The leading causes are from loss of habitat, increased use of insecticides, and climate change, she says.
“Unfortunately, the monarch population is at the second lowest level ever recorded, and so it’s good news that it’s finally proposed for protection, because it means they’ll get a comprehensive recovery plan and ongoing funding to boost the populations,” Curry said.
On its website, the Center for Biological Diversity says, “With the monarch population well below the thresholds at which government scientists predict migrations could collapse, the center and more than 100 other groups have repeatedly called on Congress to significantly increase funding to $100 million per year to help conserve the butterflies and their habitat.”
Fish and Wildlife has also announced that nearly 4,400 acres of proposed habitat for the monarchs at its overwintering grounds in coastal California.
However, Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association, which runs the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, says monarch butterflies actually are a thriving species and are not threatened.
The National Butterfly Center is located in Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)
“Monarchs are not in any danger whatsoever of going extinct. They’re one of the most common, widespread butterflies,” Glassberg told Border Report on Thursday. He said there are colonies of monarchs throughout the North, Central and South Americas, as well as Hawaii, the Canary Islands and New Zealand. But he said there are hundreds of other butterflies in North America that are in danger of going extinct.
Curry says the migrating wild populations of monarchs are threatened because they have less land to inhabit and they need milkweed to lay eggs and those crops are disappearing. She says forest fires in Mexico also threatens habitat for the insect south of the border. And lands in Mexico where milkweed used to grow now are being used to grow avocadoes for importation to the United States.
“The estimate that scientists have for how many monarchs there need to be for the migrations not to collapse is 15 acres and a winter habitat in Mexico, and last winter, there were two acres,” Curry said.
She says tree cutting by the Bureau of Land Management in California also has led to a decline of the species.
The butterfly weighs about as much as a paperclip and can fly over 3,000 miles — sometimes from southern Canada all the way across two borders to central Mexico.
Many believe the lore that the butterflies represent the souls of ancestors who fly back to Michoacan, Mexico, for Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which is celebrated across Latin American on Nov. 2 each year.
“There’s nothing like them. It’s a multi generational migration that flies across the entire country, and when they get to Mexico, they’re in this very small area that is now experiencing forest fires. There’s a ton of illegal logging to grow avocados to export to the U.S. So all the eggs are in one basket, and they’re so vulnerable,” Curry says.
Fish and Wildlife is holding a public comment period through March 12 on the monarch butterfly proposal. Comments can be submitted here.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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