Where have all the monarchs gone? 

Even though butterflies have graced our planet for at least 70 million years, many are on the verge of extinction, including the once-abundant monarch butterfly whose population has been steadily plummeting, edging closer to the precipice of disappearing.

After studying this problem for ten years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the monarch as endangered. Before declaring any designation, they need to hear from the public — you, me, all of us — by March 12, 2025. They identify climate change, pesticide use, and habitat loss as detrimental to the health of monarchs — and I say to so much more.

I returned a month ago from the mountains of Mexico where the monarchs overwinter. I have been going there since 1977 when there were about 100 million monarchs on Cerro Pelon, one of the 13 mountains where monarchs overwinter. For millennia, monarchs arrived on November 1, the Day of the Dead, and stayed through mid-April. This year and last, far fewer monarchs have migrated, and many were late, trickling in through December thus losing a month or more of time in their overwintering habitat.

Instead of starting their journey south from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico in mid-September, they are lingering longer in the warmth of October, some staying until early November. It takes one generation of monarchs migrating south in the fall, traveling over 2000 miles to a place to which they have never before been, and two to three generations to complete their northward migration. 

Migrating monarchs live about ten months, summer ones about three weeks. Instead of embarking on their journey north in mid-April as they have for eons, they now leave the mountains of Mexico to the U.S. and Canada in mid-March, experiencing the loss of another month in their mountain habitat.

Nature has endowed butterflies with amazing coping and protective mechanisms, camouflage, mimicry, elusive maneuvering and chemical defenses, besides feats of navigational skills. The onslaught to their wellbeing in every stage of their life can be attributed to the ever-increasing use of powerful poisons on our lawns and in producing our food.

As pesticides use has increased, both monarch and pollinator populations have plummeted. In the U.S. every year 80 million pounds of pesticides are used on lawns alone along with 90 million pounds of chemical fertilizer. Big Agriculture uses over a billion pounds of chemicals annually. More than three million additional pounds of pesticides are applied to nursery and floriculture crops across our country.

Glyphosate/Roundup is destroying milkweeds and more. Neo-nicotinoids, in the nicotine family, are deadly for all pollinators. Introduced into the seeds, ‘neonics’ are present in every cell of the plant — stem, leaf, flower, and pollen. Half of all home garden plants bought in big-box stores are mostly treated with neonics. Pollinators become addicted to the nicotine, leading to their early demise.

Here in the Northeast, the decline is stark. Each year we have seen fewer monarchs — in the past few years, hardly any at all. That is quite a difference from years ago when so many flitted through the fields of milkweed and wildflowers, feasting in our gardens each summer.

There are many ways sustainably to develop land and maintain our many miles of roads while nourishing native species of flora and fauna. It is absolutely important that everyone participate in helping to protect monarchs: individuals, communities, municipalities, cities, states, and the federal government.

You can help in many ways. Before March 12, write to urge the USFWS, www.fws.gov, to list monarchs as endangered. You can find a model letter on my website www.spiritofbutterflies.com.

What else can we do as individuals? Garden! Native plants attract native species. Plant milkweed, the only plant on which monarchs can lay their eggs. Create green corridors of gardens, whether in a window box or on 40 acres, in our front and back yards, along our roadways, in our municipalities, and in our cities too.

There is one sure way to make our gardens beautiful and our agriculture fruitful while enriching the soil, storing carbon, and keeping methane from our landfill. Compost!

As well as making all your plants healthy and vigorous, compost can help save the world. Composting not only enriches the soil, but reduces methane from forming when we throw organic matter into the garbage. According to the Drawdown Project by Princeton, composting is one of the most effective solutions in dealing with climate change. Even a quarter-inch of compost spread over one acre can absorb ten tons of carbon!  Compost is a natural way to provide nutrients to plants, enhancing productivity while storing carbon in soils.

If everyone in the U.S. composted their food waste, it would be the equivalent of taking almost eight million cars off the road, besides the added benefits of storing carbon naturally and reducing methane emissions.

Get on board, help save the planet. By saving monarchs we are helping all pollinators who fertilize plants bringing us coffee, chocolate, fruits, nuts, and much more. Without the pollination skills of our butterflies, we would lose a third of our food. Monarchs are an indicator species, considered one of the canaries in the coal mine. Their disappearance signifies many species falling in succession, the tapestry of life unraveling. I don’t want to even imagine life without all the pollinators who work tirelessly on our behalf.

It is mind-boggling that a third of food produced worldwide is discarded. Waste not, want not. We all have to make an effort, a sincere commitment to make our environment healthy for all creatures, including us humans.

We can help save our planet and ourselves one garden at a time.

Maraleen Manos-Jones is an educator, author, award-winning environmental activist, artist, master gardener, and long-time resident of Phoenicia who has been inspired by monarch butterflies for over 50 years. For more information, go to www.spiritofbutterflies.com.