Monarchs have much to teach us, and the plight of this amazing and ancient organism is a warning to us all that an ecological armageddon may be underway. Photo by Becky Nystrom

Nature and her creatures are suffering, and they’re calling for our help. The message of the monarchs (Danaus plexippus), a once widespread and iconic organism now threatened with extinction, is but one of many species in unprecedented decline, pleading for our attention and action. Monarchs have much to teach us, and the plight of this amazing and ancient organism is a warning to us all that an ecological armageddon may be underway.

The eastern monarch’s mind-boggling 3,000-mile multigenerational migration between Mexico and North America is unlike any other in the world. On their springtime journey north, adult butterflies forage on wildflowers for nectar, find mates, and exclusively seek milkweed on which to lay their eggs. They live only a few weeks. Spring migration continues northward through successive generations, each critically seeking milkweed for egg-laying and foraging on nectar flowers as summer days unfold. By early fall the final generation will undergo a still-mysterious transformation, postponing mating until the following spring, and preparing their tiny bodies for the long migration south to their winter home. It is these great-great-grandchildren who somehow find their way back to the ancestral oyamel fir forests of Mexico from which their grandparents overwintered and departed the previous spring.

According to the Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, and other sources, monarch populations have plummeted by 80-85% over the past two decades due to landscape-wide threats from pesticides, habitat loss, disease, severe weather events, logging, and climate change. The UN’s landmark 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warns that the web of life is unraveling. According to IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson, “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide…” While the monarch’s decline is a harbinger of environmental stress, thousands of other creatures are silently disappearing as well, many still unknown and unnamed. According to the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s Red List (IUCN 2022), more than 41% of amphibians, 33% of reef corals, 13% of birds, 27% of mammals, 34% of conifers, and 51% of freshwater fishes are threatened with extinction. Of the more than 8 million known animal and plant species on Earth, of which 5.5 million are insects, 1 million are threatened with extinction within decades. A global “insect apocalypse” is already underway, in which insect abundance has declined 45% in the last 40 years, and at least forty percent of all insect species now face extinction. More than a third of the Earth’s terrestrial habitat integrity has been lost or degraded, while 85% of wetlands are no more. The North American monarch population is critically imperiled — and recently listed as endangered by IUCN.

And that brings us back to our beloved monarchs, the milkweeds, and the fabric of Life’s web of which they are an ancient part. Without milkweeds to exclusively provide monarch caterpillars their only food source from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis, monarch butterflies simply cannot survive. Our region’s milkweeds, including the common (Asclepias syriaca), swamp (A. incarnata), and butterfly (A. tuberosa) milkweeds, are amazingly complex and beautiful plants best known for their intoxicating fragrance, distinctive green pods, delicately plumed wind-borne seeds, and critical role in the life cycle of the magnificent monarch butterfly. Tragically, populations of both native milkweeds and monarchs are in precipitous decline across the nation. Extensive herbicide use in glyphosate-tolerant (“Roundup-Ready®”) corn and soybean fields and along roadsides decimates both native nectar plants where adults feed and the precious milkweed upon which they lay their eggs. More than 160 million acres of monarch habitat have already been lost due to the adoption of glyphosate-tolerant crops, while an additional 6,000 acres are lost to development each DAY (2.2 million acres per year) within the butterfly’s summer breeding grounds ().

So how can we help? Planting milkweed gardens, protecting existing milkweed habitat and propagating and restoring native wildflowers are key to the survival of this much beloved butterfly. Educate others. Don’t use pesticides. Create a monarch waystation (). Locally, support the mission of the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy and help us conserve our area’s wetlands, meadows, woodlands, and other wild places so that monarchs and countless other creatures can survive and thrive!

The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to preserve and enhance the water quality, scenic beauty and ecological health of the lakes, streams, wetlands and watersheds of the Chautauqua region. For more information, visit chautauquawatershed.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.