Trump administration declines monarch butterfly endangered species protections
Updated Dec 17, 2020;
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Ann Arbor s Leslie Golf Course works with Monarchs in the Rough to plant milkweed for endangered Monarch butterflies
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WASHINGTON, DC The Trump administration has decided not to extend Endangered Species Act protections to the iconic and beloved monarch butterfly despite dwindling population counts across North America.
In a Dec. 15 announcement, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) said other “higher-priority listing actions” preclude designating the monarch as threatened or endangered, but the butterfly will become a “candidate” for future listing.
The wildlife service says the butterfly’s status would be reviewed annually but the agency “does not have enough resources to complete the listing.” The monarch does not receive legal protections in the meantime.
The Energy 202: These are the top climate stories of 2020 Alexandra Ellerbeck
with Dino Grandoni A presidential election. A national reckoning over race and justice in America. A worldwide pandemic that ground economies to a halt. 2020 was a momentous year. Yet looming over each of those events is climate change, which has pushed global temperatures to about 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels, a threshold that has already led to rising seas, a thawing Arctic and devastating droughts. Here are some of the top stories on climate change in 2020: 1. With Joe Biden’s victory, the United States is set for an about-face on climate change policy.