Planting milkweed for endangered California Monarch butterflies
Planting milkweed for endangered California Monarch butterflies 2021 saw an uptick in the number of Monarch ( Danaus plexippus ) butterflies at the Monarch Grove at Pismo State Beach in Central California, the largest sanctuary in the state. Counts in recent years revealed a 90% population drop from 25 years ago. In 2020, there were 300 butterflies. This year, the trend is more favourable with than 20,000 counted. This is a far cry from the past. In the 1980s, there were 4 to 10 million butterflies overwintering on the California coast, but those numbers dropped in the 1990s and a 1997 count revealed 1.2 million butterflies. From 1998 on, there were never more than a few hundred thousand monarchs. Major threats to monarch population are climate change causing extremely wet and cold conditions in the O yamel forests of Mexico, loss of milkweed habitat (due to uptick in use of pesticides like RoundUp, Permethrin for West Nile control etc), deforestation (including strangely the