Royalty of the Skies
The USFWS is proposing to list the monarch butterfly as threatened: what does that mean for Texas?
I love to see a monarch butterfly. The species is an iconic natural emblem and is sure to be a delight for just about anyone who is lucky enough to cross its path during its spring or fall migration. Or increasingly, in areas where the species has opted to become non-migratory, such as central and south Florida, certain locales along the Gulf Coast, deep south Texas, and certain areas of California.
After a decade of hemming and hawing, the USFWS announced on Tuesday that it was finally moving forward with plans to list the monarch butterfly as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This isn’t without a whole host of opinions and complications.
Texas is a major part of the central flyway, where monarch butterflies filter into and out of during their twice yearly migration through the state, to and from their winter roosting grounds located in the oyamel forests of central Mexico. We’re the “Texas Funnel”. It’s also not lost on me that we’re proposing to protect a highly migratory animal species coming from Mexico when we won’t even protect migratory humans coming from the same country/region. But, I digress.
Today, the eastern migratory population is estimated to have declined by approximately 80%. The western migratory population has declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, putting the western populations at greater than 99% chance of extinction by 2080. During this same period, the probability of extinction for eastern monarchs ranges from 56 to 74%, according to the Service’s most recent species status assessment. - USFWS Press Release
In 2023 and earlier this year, I spent quite a bit of time working on some drafts to my currently on hiatus In the Weeds gardening newsletter regarding the monarch butterfly and milkweed, mostly pertaining to certain, in my opinion, unhinged, thoughts coming from University of Georgia scientist Dr. Andy Davis and his Thoughtful Monarch Facebook group. I ended up never finalizing and publishing those essays because I put the newsletter on hiatus to focus on writing here and working on my book, and because I didn’t want to give Dr. Davis any more airtime than he already had on Facebook. Suffice to say, Dr. Davis was a significant reason why the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) downgraded the migratory monarch butterfly from endangered (in 2022) to vulnerable in late 2023. The IUCN has no influence on regulations within the US, it is mostly an organization that works to track species on the brink of extinction globally and to bring awareness to the issues at hand. However, an IUCN listing is certainly a push to get countries to engage in protecting vulnerable species in their own lands.
Like many gardeners and butterfly enthusiasts, I raised a couple dozen monarch butterflies a few years ago for a brief period of time, mostly because my son was young and it was a fun interaction and learning experience for him but also because I had a lot of monarch caterpillars in the garden during certain times of the year and I wanted to help a few of them succeed in becoming adults. Also, I don’t think you can say you’ve lived until you’ve seen a monarch caterpillar turn into bright green goo for a few minutes and then slowly harden into chrysalis! It’s an amazing sight to behold. I’ll not get into all of the issues that come up with raising caterpillars in cages, you can look that up yourself, and suffice to say, I eventually quit raising them and left them to their own devices in the garden. I joined the Thoughtful Monarch group in 2022, mostly intending to learn about the increasing information coming out about the protozoan parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, OE, as it pertains to milkweed plants, in particular the very popular garden plant, tropical milkweed (Asclepias currassavica). Dr. Davis was on a rampage to get rid of tropical milkweed from gardens, primarily in Florida, as it was believed to be leading to significant issues with the monarch’s development and their ability to fly long distances—migrate. But then he went so far as to recommend people not plant any milkweed at all, native or otherwise, in their gardens, and even alluding in the Facebook group for people to remove it from their larger properties, though I see he’s now added a note to his blog post about not removing it from wild areas, that wasn’t there originally or in original posts on Facebook. That only came after big protestations from the Florida Native Plant Society and the Florida Wildflower Foundation.
Meanwhile, OE persists on native milkweed naturally, however, there’s very little research on native milkweeds and OE out there that I’ve been able to dredge up, though it doesn’t take much citizen science digging to realize our growing season in the south has changed considerably in recent decades. The issue with the non-native species vs the native species was that the OE had a chance to die back when the plants senesced during the winter but well, warmer climates mean longer growing seasons. And even perhaps more long term than we realize, some species of milkweed persist nearly 10-12 months of the year, especially in habitats that regulate climate, such as swamps and wetlands. The best data I’ve seen about native milkweed persistence in winter comes from some data out of Florida from Scott Davis at The Milkweed Foundation. This is regarding aquatic milkweed (Asclepias perennis), which I have also seen growing in winter conditions in Texas, and I suspect it easily persists in inland-coastal locations year-round, but how many people are tromping in appropriate habitat during those months to do population studies? Not many, if any. You can easily sort through iNaturalist and find observations of healthy growing plants from December to February in natural habitat in the Houston region. Beyond that, I’ve seen zizotes milkweed (Asclepias oenotheroides) growing during winter months, too. I think there is a lot of unknown, or at least unanalyzed, information out there regarding monarchs and milkweeds as it pertains to how it has influenced (or not) the monarch migration patterns and populations.
And with Dr. Davis’ staunch opposition to tropical milkweed and its real or perceived dangers to the monarch population, you get a different viewpoint from other scientists and researchers elsewhere in the country.
In his Oct. 19, 2022 post, Professor Taylor lamented that "the perceived relationship between tropical milkweed, O.E., and monarchs in California has led to the ban of the sale of tropical milkweed in several counties in that state." Among the other noted scientists who disagree on banning tropical milkweed are emeritus professor Hugh Dingle of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro of the Department of Evolution and Ecology; and Washington State University entomologist David James.
The debates over how endangered the monarchs actually are, how much tropical milkweed influences that, the effects on OE, pesticides, habitat loss—there are opinions and facts and arguments all over the internet that you can easily deep dive into if you so wanted. Generally, I defer my research reading about monarch butterflies to what comes out of Monarch Watch, in particular what Dr. Chip Taylor is saying, and take everything else in as just more data points to consider. Regarding population status and listing of the species, he wrote in 2023: “So, what does this mean for the United States? Should the Fish and Wildlife Service declare the monarch threatened or endangered or, given the present numbers and examples of representation, resilience and spatial redundancy, determine that regulatory protection is unwarranted? I favor the latter. In my view, there is nothing to be gained by declaring monarchs threatened or endangered at this time (Taylor, 2023). The “at this time” is key. In the near term, the numbers will certainly vary from year to year, and the prospect of losing the eastern migration may loom from time to time, but the monarch population is remarkably resilient, and the migration will be with us for decades. In the long term (>50 years), due to climate change, the migration will be lost. However, as a species, monarchs will be with us forever. That said, many species are less likely to survive during the coming decades than monarchs.”
And that’s where I’m at with this listing at this time. Yesterday evening my husband said that USFWS was also proposing to list the eastern hellbender as endangered. My first thought, it wasn’t already listed? We’re considering listing the monarch butterfly as threatened when we have how many more precarious species in dire need of listing than it?
Historically, eastern hellbenders have been documented in 626 populations. Recent data indicate only 371 of these populations (59%) remain. Among the remaining populations, only 45 (12%) are stable, 108 (29%) have an unknown recruitment status, and 218 (59%) are in decline.
There are currently 55 species on the USFWS Proposed for Listing list and 14 Candidate Species. This doesn’t even count any of the state listed species that probably should also be added to the Proposed or Candidate list federally, nor any of the other rare and uncommon species that no one has even assessed yet. And a reminder, listed plant species are offered no protection on private property! So, the bulldozer can come scrape away a plant and a developer can put up a strip mall if they so wanted.
Which leads to the bigger issue here with the monarchs: its host plant. Milkweed species can be found in a variety of habitats and of course, if the milkweed isn’t listed but the monarch is, what does that mean for development and agriculture? Well, this time it isn’t our illustrious Attorney General getting up in arms about an endangered species (I’m sure comments are coming) but our Ag Commissioner, Sid Miller.
“This proposal isn’t about protecting butterflies. It’s about out-of-touch and out-of-control Washington bureaucrats forcing a radical agenda that punishes rural America and the people who call it home.”
He goes on to complain about the impacts on just about any industry in the state from football stadiums (don’t disrupt our religion!) to feedlots (drive through Muleshoe sometime, I wouldn’t fly through there if I was a monarch butterfly). Our economy is apparently built on the ability to swallow monarch habitat whole!
So, that’s where we are at. The I-35 corridor is a major part of the central flyway and whether we list it now or in 30 years, milkweed and its associated habitat is going to continue to be eaten away by development throughout the state. Climate change is going to continue accelerating unless something drastic occurs in the next decade. How much can we complain about people growing tropical milkweed when we start losing our winters and even native species adjust? We will continue to build over and degrade milkweed and the ecosystems it thrives in. If monarchs can persist without the migration, is that a bad thing? The are already non-migratory populations in other parts of the world. I get and understand that losing a migration, something almost mystical, is a really big deal. How much can we micromanage, though? We really can’t. Most of this is out of our control and has been for decades. We are facing a new federal administration that is likely to dismantle significant regulations for endangered species, and to be honest I’m already preparing for a drastic dismantling of these agencies in the coming years. Just rip the Band-Aid off and expect it to happen. Our state administration is already antagonistic towards wildlife, even if some of them were willing to spend money for new state parks last year.
It isn’t enough.
Do we go ahead and list the monarch despite other species being in more dire straits? Is listing the monarch going to at least help us in the long term with other conservation efforts? You protect monarch habitat, thus you are protecting other species at the same time? I was about to write that I was confused why USFWS didn’t do this earlier in the year so it would definitely go through before the new administration but I realized I think they were like so many of us, not expecting Trump 2.0. So, here we are, a last minute push to see this thing through, without perhaps another chance for a decade or longer.
Public Comments are open through March 12, 2025. Submit them here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FWS-R3-ES-2024-0137-0001
Regardless of the outcome of the listing process, we know that there continues to be cause for concern about the monarch population even with numerous ongoing voluntary conservation efforts. We need to do more to support monarchs. That means increasing the amount of monarch habitat we are creating each year, enhancing existing habitats to increase their value for monarchs, and decreasing the amount of monarch habitat that is lost each year. There are many groups and organizations supporting current efforts, but we need to expand that network to include even more people. - Monarch Watch, 11-26-2024
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and In the Weeds. She hosts one podcast, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and recently retired The Garden Path Podcast.
Our accused criminal AG has sued the feds over the listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard and would likely do it over monarchs as well, if it bothered any oligarchs. The ESA is in the crosshairs of Project 2025, too. We have a lot of resisting to do.