Today there are two conservation groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety File a lawsuit against US Fish and Wildlife Service to force officials to set a binding date for the end of federal protection for it monarch Butterflies under the Endangered Species Act.
He was the monarch Suggested For protection in December 2024, making final listing due in December 2025. The groups say the delay increases the risk of national extinction of the beloved pollinator.
“Comprehensive protection measures are urgently needed to ensure the future of these migratory wonders,” said Tera Carey, associate director of endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Kings unite us and it is shameful that their future is being sacrificed for political nonsense.”
Instead of releasing the final list at the end of 2025, Trump officials delayed the decision as a “long-term measure,” with no specific release date provided. The federal assessment of the monarch’s status found that within the next 60 years, migratory western monarchs have a 99% chance of becoming extinct, while eastern monarchs have a 74% chance.
“The Service must finalize protections for monarchs from their threats, including in particular pesticides, which have been the primary driver of their rapid decline,” said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety and an attorney on the case. “The service’s duty is to protect kings, not corporations.”
The number of migratory monarchs has declined by more than 80% since the 1990s. Last year, the population of the eastern regions, which spend the winter in the mountains of Mexico, was only a third of the size needed to move out of the avalanche danger zone. Updated population data will be published this spring, but the population is expected to be about the same.
The number of western monarchs, which spend the winter in forests on the California coast, has declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, and numbered just 12,260 this year. This is the third lowest toll ever counted.
In 2014, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and renowned scientist Royal Lincoln Brewer submitted a scientific and legal request Petition With the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking to protect the butterflies and their habitats under the Endangered Species Act. The butterflies were placed on a waiting list of candidates for protection in 2020. The centers sued to be lifted from bureaucratic limbo, leading to the proposed listing in 2024.
The lawsuit filed today in San Francisco was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
background
In one of the longest migrations of any insect, at the end of summer, eastern monarchs fly from the northern United States and southern Canada to spend the winter together in the high-altitude spruce forests of Mexico. Population size is determined by measuring the area of trees turned bright orange by the butterfly populations. Scientists estimate that 15 acres of occupied forest is the minimum for migratory pollinators to be above extinction risk in North America.
The Kings face enormous threats. The initial decline was driven by the widespread loss of milkweed, the caterpillars’ sole food source, due to increased use of the herbicide glyphosate in fields of corn and soybeans genetically engineered to resist it. Volatile herbicides sprayed on newer herbicide-resistant crops wash away and reduce the floral resources needed by adult butterflies. All stages of monarchs are harmed by neonic insecticides used to coat seeds of crops and ornamental plants.
Climate change is damaging forests as winter and extreme weather events interfere with reproduction and migration. Grasslands and other green spaces that provide wildflowers for adult nectar are still lost to development.
Millions of monarchs are killed by vehicles each year as they migrate across the continent. In its winter home in Mexico, forests and streams are destroyed to grow Avocado Unsustainable US demand. In California, more than 60 known overwintering forest sites have been cut down.
The listing of hundreds of threatened species and the monarch has been postponed indefinitely, with their protection deemed “long-term measures”. The Fish and Wildlife Service lost 18 percent of its staff last year, including more than 500 scientists, and its Endangered Species Act listing budget was cut to 2004 levels.
In 2025, no plant or animal is protected under the Endangered Species Act for the first time since 1981.
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