Hello readers of The Wild. I first saw tightly packed ribbons of orange and black monarch butterflies in eucalyptus trees on a bluff in Goleta, Calif., decades ago. Sunlight illuminated the grove where I was standing and almost immediately, wings started to open and flutter. The butterflies resembled one collective organism slowly coming to life. I was dumbfounded by their wild beauty.
These days, fewer people may have this experience. The population of migrating Western monarchs that once traveled between Baja, Mexico, and Northern California is perilously close to collapsing. Five years ago, 28,000 butterflies migrated through the Monarch Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach. In 2020, just 200 monarchs were counted by volunteers.