There are fewer things more beautiful than thousands of Monarch butterflies.

Don’t believe us? Watch the short film below to see the beautiful butterflies in all their glory.

DisneyNature: Wings of Life – Monarch Butterflies from MOVING ART by Louie Schwartzberg on Vimeo.

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Monarch butterflies are declining at such a dramatic rate that it’s hard for scientists to keep up. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the butterfly population has been reduced by 95 percent in the last 15 years.

“We were hoping to see one or two monarchs this year. We didn’t see any,” teacher Allison Cole at Flagstaff Academy in Longmont, one of several Colorado schools where students have planted milkweed gardens, told The Denver Post.

The loss is due to huge swaths of crops across the country being sprayed with glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Specifically, it’s because so much of our agricultural crops are genetically modified to be Roundup Ready, which means they’re resistant to Roundup and as result, farmers continuously spray these herbicides, creating dead zones. And these dead zones kill milkweed, a plant that Monarch caterpillars must have in order to survive.

That’s where you can help. By planting milkweed in your garden you’re creating a habitat where Monarch butterflies can thrive. It’s all part of a new national strategy which calls for creating “milkweed havens” or highways where Monarchs can survive as they migrate 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico. Groups like Monarch Watch are working to plant milkweed. The group sent 600 milkweed plants to schools and nonprofits across Colorado this year.

“People are thinking, if we plant rows of milkweed along fields, highways or anywhere we can be planting, that will provide more stopover places,” Gina Glenne, a Fish and Wildlife Service botanist based in Grand Junction said to The Denver Post. “We think the butterflies were doing fairly well before the 1990s. But we don’t have the milkweed now because we spray these crops.”

President Obama has convened a group of experts to figure out how to save Monarch butterflies and other pollinators, namely honey bees. In June, the Obama Administration announced $8 million in funding for farmers and ranchers to establish safe habitats for honey bees who have also been hit hard by the onslaught of pesticide use.

Pollinators are extremely important because they pollenate 75 percent of our flowering plants and nearly 75 percent of our crops. Without pollinators we’d have fewer fruits, vegetables, and seeds like blueberries, squash, coffee, and chocolate. Not to mention how gorgeous these black and orange butterflies are to see as they float from plant to plant spreading the pollination love.

It’s just devastating that in one generation we’ve destroyed a habitat so much so that our pollinators can’t survive. But we can still protect these beauties by planting milkweed, avoiding the use of Roundup, and not buying any food that was grown with the use of Roundup. What’s more, we can educate ourselves on what’s really in our food by fighting for GMO labeling before it’s too late. Let’s fight for the Monarch butterfly and they’ll continue to inspire and feed us.

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Image: William Warby

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If you happen to have a run-in with a monarch butterfly in the near future, consider yourself lucky. They’re about to be listed as endangered species.

The Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity, Xerces Society and renowned monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend Endangered Species Act protection for the monarch butterfly. The agency will now review the status of the monarchs, a process that takes about one year.

Monarch butterfly populations have declined by a staggering 90 percent in the last 20 years, a drop that the groups say is beyond significant. “Our petition is a scientific and legal blueprint for creating the protection that the monarch so direly needs, and we are gratified that the agency has now taken this vital first step in a timely fashion,” George Kimbrell, Senior Attorney for Center for Food Safety said in a statement. “We will continue to do everything we can to ensure monarchs are protected.”

Experts agree that the monarch butterfly is experiencing such a decline due largely in part to the planting of genetically modified crops. Most genetically modified crops being planted in the Midwest, where most of the monarchs are born, are resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, the glyphosate-based herbicide that kills off milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food.

“The population has declined from a recorded high of approximately 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to only 35 million butterflies last winter, the lowest number ever recorded,” the Center for Food Safety said in a statement. “The overall population shows a steep and statistically significant decline of 90 percent over 20 years. In addition to herbicide use with genetically engineered crops, monarchs are also threatened by global climate change, drought and heat waves, other pesticides, urban sprawl and logging on their Mexican wintering grounds.”

And the groups note that rising global temperatures could make the monarch’s homes, both winters in Mexico and summers in the U.S., unsuitable to sustain the species in the very near future.

According to the CFS, monarchs need “a very large population size to be resilient to threats from severe weather events and predation.” A whopping 50 percent of monarchs winter population in Mexico can be eaten by birds and mammals in just one winter. And extreme weather conditions can also be devastating: “a single winter storm in 2002 killed an estimated 500 million monarchs — 14 times the size of the entire current population,” CFS explained.

“We are extremely pleased that the federal agency in charge of protecting our nation’s wildlife has recognized the dire situation of the monarch,” said Sarina Jepsen, the Xerces Society’s endangered species director. “Protection as a threatened species will enable extensive monarch habitat recovery on both public and private lands.”

Monarchs, like bees, are important pollinators vital to the health of our food chain. Honeybee populations are also currently being threatened by similar environmental hazards.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The once-common monarch butterfly is MIA, and it doesn’t bode well for the health of our species.

Unable to survive the cold temperatures that blanket the U.S. during winter months, the monarch butterfly population heads to Mexico and Southern California every year to bask in the warmth. Following instructions built into their DNA, subsequent generations of monarch butterfly seek out the very same trees and bushes in which their parents were born, even though they’ve never been there before. And the happy cycle begins all over again. That is, until this year.

“This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead,” reported Jim Robbins for the New York Times. “They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.”

A world without the monarch butterfly. Think about that. Our children could grow up without ever knowing what it’s like to feel this orange-and-black fairy land on their arm, or seeing one hatch from their cocoon (my favorite science project as a child).

So what’s causing the monarch butterfly to break from thousands of years of tradition? Some say pesticides, specifically the neonicotinoids often blamed for the decline of the honey bee. But even if all pesticides had never been used on a single U.S. crop, experts say the monarch butterfly would still be in peril.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, told the New York Times. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

Every time we tear raze a meadow, cluster of trees, or wetland to put up a parking lot, we’re destroying a monarch butterfly’s home. Every time we uproot native plants like the milkweed to install a sterile lawn and genetically-engineered flowers, we take food out of a monarch butterfly’s mouth. Which eventually means less food for our own families.

Like the bee, the monarch butterfly is a pollinator. Many forms of life are sustained by the seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, and foliage that result from pollination–including humans. This is what the produce section of your grocery store would look like if pollinators like the butterfly go the way of the Dodo. Scary.

So what can we do to save the monarch butterfly? Well for one thing, eat organic when you can, and never use chemical pesticides on your property. Encourage the growth of native plants, especially the milkweed, as well as nectar-producing flowers that attract butterflies. Purchase only FSC-Certified wood products, since illegal logging in Mexico is devastating monarch butterfly habitats there. Lastly, support programs working to protect the monarch butterfly. Visit MonarchWatch.org to learn more.

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Image: usfwsnortheast

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