UPDATE: MAJOR VICTORY ON MONARCHS PROTECTION
Monarch Butterflies Put on Candidate Waiting List for Endangered Species Act Protection
WASHINGTON, D.C. Following yesterday s news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has now deemed that protection for Monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act is scientifically and legally warranted but currently precluded by other species listings (
scroll down for press release), the Service later in the day released additional details concerning its decision, including that it intends to propose listing under the Endangered Species Act for Monarchs in Fiscal Year 2024, if listing is still warranted at that time.
In response to this announcement about the proposed deadline, Center for Food Safety s Legal Director George Kimbrell issued the following statement:
Dec 16, 2020
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) Federal officials on Tuesday declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status, but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation.
Environmentalists said delaying that long could spell disaster for the beloved black-and-orange butterfly, once a common sight in backyard gardens, meadows and other landscapes now seeing its population dwindling.
The monarch’s status will be reviewed annually, said Charlie Wooley, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Great Lakes regional office. Emergency action could be taken earlier, but plans now call for proposing to list the monarch under the Endangered Species Act in 2024 unless its situation improves enough to make the step unnecessary.
FILE – This Aug. 19, 2015, file photo, shows a monarch butterfly in Vista, Calif. The western monarch butterfly population wintering along California’s coast remained critically low for the second year in a row, a count by an environmental group released Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020, showed. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
(CN) With Inauguration Day looming, the lame-duck Trump administration continues to spend political capital on weakening the Endangered Species Act, the latest move a redefining of “critical habitat” as only referring to a given species’ presently occupied ecosystem rather than its historical range.
While the move outraged conservationist groups and wildlife advocates, they also acknowledge that the incoming Biden administration is likely to render this latest move an exercise in futility.
USDA The orange-and-black monarch butterfly, known for its 3,000-mile migration across North America and its plunging population, meets the criteria for listing as a threatened or endangered species, said the Interior Department on Tuesday. But it will be listed only as a candidate for federal protection because “we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions,” said Fish and Wildlife Service director Aurelia Skipwith. At 60 million in 2019, the monarch population is less than one-sixth of its size in 1996. The government has studied the butterfly since environmental groups filed a petition in 2014 to list it as a threatened species. The monarch suffers from loss of habitat, expanded use of insecticides, and climate change.
AP Environmental Writer
A monarch butterfly â the twin black spots on its hind wings mark it as a male â on common milkweed, the host plant for monarch caterpillars, in Dickinson County.
(Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) Federal officials on Tuesday declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status, but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation.
Environmentalists said delaying that long could spell disaster for the beloved black-and-orange butterfly, once a common sight in backyard gardens, meadows and other landscapes now seeing its population dwindling.