By The Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Last month, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed listing the monarch butterfly as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The agency published a proposed rule in the Federal Register, and is accepting public comment on that rule through March 12.
According to the agency’s most recent monarch Species Status Assessment, “by 2080 the probability of extinction for eastern monarchs ranges from 56 to 74% and the probability of extinction for western monarchs is greater than 95%. Threats to the species include the loss and degradation of breeding, migratory and overwintering habitat, exposure to insecticides, and the effects of climate change.”
A threatened species is one step safer than an endangered one. An endangered species faces “danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range,” while a threatened species is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future.”
The proposal is the latest stage in the monarchs’ long and winding journey toward official federal recognition of their plight. In 2014, in response to several conservation organizations’ request for the agency to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species, USFWS published a “finding” that listing the monarch butterfly might be warranted.
Six years later, USFWS published another finding, stating that listing the species as endangered or threatened was warranted, but “precluded by higher priority actions.” In other words, the monarch met all the criteria for listing, but so many other candidate species were in even worse shape that the monarch’s status was left unchanged.
In both 2022 and 2023, the agency reiterated that finding.
USFWS has released a fact sheet on the proposed rule, specific to agricultural producers. It states that the rule’s goal is “to encourage voluntary conservation measures. That means that activities that may maintain, enhance, remove or establish milkweed and nectar plants within the breeding and migratory range would be allowed in many circumstances.”
The intent is “to avoid large-scale, permanent conversion of monarch habitat. The proposed rule explicitly allows for routine agricultural activities, livestock grazing and ranching activities… encouraging active habitat management that supports monarchs while landowners manage their land as they intended.”
The full text of the proposed rule, and instructions for submitting comments, are available in the Federal Register Reading Room. The USFWS website offers additional information.
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