Monarch butterfly, get in line.
Federal officials have acknowledged that the once ubiquitous orange-and-black visitor to backyards and gardens is a candidate for threatened or endangered status. Nonetheless, no immediate — nor even short-term — action will be taken to save them. Why? Because other species are at the front of the line, awaiting the designation.
Environmentalists are sounding an alarm that projected delays of up to several years could mean disaster for the butterfly that used to be a common sight on the North American landscape, where 90% of the monarchs live.
On Dec. 15, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said emergency action could be taken earlier and will be evaluated annually, but current plans call for a proposition to list the monarch under the Endangered Species Act in 2024 unless things improve. Or get worse.
And even once the proposition is made, another year (for public comment) would follow.
The delay in a monarch rescue mission comes despite an unheard of public campaign on behalf of the butterfly. That campaign reached from school classrooms to garden clubs to environmental groups and government agencies. Since the effort began picking up speed in 2014, milkweed plants (a lifeline for monarchs) are being planted or nurtured countrywide.
Still, the monarch is all but disappearing. Its population in the eastern U.S. has dropped by about 80% since the mid-1990s, and it’s worse in the West. The culprits are development, herbicides in cropland and global warming, which indirectly impacts the monarchs’ annual migration.
Getting the monarch on the list now would require federal agencies to consider — consider — the effects of land development on the butterfly and its habitat.
That should happen without an endangered designation, but it doesn’t.
So the listing is critical. Literally.
Federal officials said that a rigorous science-based evaluation already has found that the monarch is in jeopardy, but other listing actions came first. The Trump administration has listed only 25 species, fewer than any since the endangered species measure was enacted in 1973. The Obama administration had added 360. Advocacy groups have said 47 species have gone extinct waiting to be listed.
This underscores a broader problem that seems endemic at all levels and departments of government: the mire of bureaucracy, red tape, intransigence, lethargy. Pick your unflattering adjective. There are plenty to choose from.
