Davis argued that the monarch population may never have been in danger in the first place. He says he pointed it out a long time ago. I suggested we look at other parts of their life cycle. The wintering story caught on. That is the one that gets a lot of attention and recall.
It may be simpler to count the butterflies as they descend on a small patch of land in Mexico than it is to count them as they scatter across the country. One of the authors of the book Monarchs and Milkweed is a professor of environmental science at Cornell University. It takes place over a long period of time and it's difficult to get data. The lion's share of the scientific work has been on the winter population.
Some aspect of monarch biology has been changing over the last 30 years. They are no longer migratory. Many butterflies won't need to travel all the way to Mexico as the climate warms, and a place like Florida may be a good stop. San Francisco residents fill their yards with non-native milkweed in order to host monarchs year-round.
The study will be controversial among people in the monarch community because of its use of citizen science and reliability. He says that there will be people who dismiss the study. The majority of scientists agree that the monarch is alive and well. It doesn't leave us.
Emma Pelton isn't one of them She called the UGA study an example of overreach. Researchers used a few survey sites in Oregon and Idaho to figure out monarch population trends in the Pacific Northwest. Pelton is worried that the public is being told to stop caring about the species. It makes a lot of people confused.
There was an increase in monarch counts at their wintering grounds last winter. There was a 35 percent increase in butterflies making it to Mexico in the winter 2014–2018. After years of lows, the annual monarch count rebounded in the winter of 2011. The Xerces Society's Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count increased in number by a hundredfold.
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