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Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to native plants, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.
The Butterfly Grove at Pismo Beach used to sound alive before you even saw it. The first time I visited on a winter morning over a decade ago, I stood beneath the towering eucalyptus and heard a faint rustle, like distant rain, as thousands of monarch butterflies shifted their wings along the branches overhead. Through a docent’s telescope, tight clusters the size of pine cones resolved into overlapping black and orange wings, each butterfly hanging in suspended animation as it waited out the cold months on California’s Central Coast.
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But when I returned this January, the trees looked strangely bare. The informative signs were still there, but the air that once seemed to shimmer with butterflies was mostly still. I spotted only a few monarchs drifting in the native plant garden at the grove’s edge.
My experience is part of a much larger story. This past winter, volunteers counted just a little over 12,000 western monarch butterflies along the California coast, the third-lowest tally in nearly three decades of monitoring. According to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which coordinates the counting, western monarchs numbered around 4.5 million in the 1980s. Today, the population has declined by more than 99 percent, driven by habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. Our window to reverse the trend is narrowing fast.
The question hangs over the empty grove: Can the butterflies come back?
Monarchs survive winter through a remarkable strategy: epic, cross-continental, multi-generational migration. In North America there are two main populations. The western monarchs breed west of the Rocky Mountains and overwinter along California’s coast. Eastern monarchs travel thousands of miles to mountain forests in Mexico. During summer, monarchs spread across vast breeding areas wherever milkweed grows. Females lay eggs on milkweed plants, because monarch caterpillars can eat nothing else.
The migration is a relay race across generations. “In the spring each generation lives about a month,” explains Xerces pollinator conservation specialist Angela Laws. Butterflies move gradually north and inland, laying eggs that become the next generation. By fall, a special long-lived generation emerges. “These individuals can live nine months,” Laws says. They are the ones that fly back to the overwintering groves like Pismo Beach.
There, monarchs cluster together in trees and enter a resting state. “They’re not hibernating,” Laws explains. “They’re just kind of hunkering down for the winter.” The same butterflies will leave the grove in spring and lay the first eggs of the new migration cycle.
Why has this migration collapsed so dramatically?
“There doesn’t appear to be just one smoking gun,” Laws says. “It seems to be a bunch of factors together.”
Habitat loss is a major driver. Coastal development has removed or altered many overwintering groves. Trees have been cut, surrounding vegetation cleared and wind patterns changed. Because monarchs depend on precise microclimates, even small alterations can make a grove unsuitable.
The loss of breeding habitat inland is equally serious. Monarch caterpillars can only eat milkweed (Asclepias species), while adults need nectar from flowering plants throughout the season. Across California’s Central Valley and other regions, those plants have largely disappeared as land has been converted to agriculture or development.
The widespread adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops has exacerbated this problem. Studies in monarchs’ eastern range show that increased use of glyphosate herbicides dramatically reduced milkweed on farmland, destroying breeding habitat. In the West, the same 2019 study that linked declines to coastal development also found that monarchs declined significantly with glyphosate and neonicotinoid use in breeding areas.
Xerces researchers recently collected milkweed leaves from roadsides, wildlife refuges, farm edge, and even backyards across the Central Valley. “What we found was that every single milkweed was contaminated,” Laws says. On average, each plant contained residues from about 11 different pesticides.
Some of those chemicals were insecticides known to be highly toxic to butterflies and other pollinators. Others were herbicides or fungicides that may cause subtler, sublethal effects.
Researchers have discovered insecticide residues in milkweed far from farms, suggesting chemicals travel widely through the landscape. “That was shocking to see,” says Corey Shake, senior restoration ecologist at the nonprofit River Partners. Systemic pesticides that accumulate in plant tissues, he says, “correspond with the decline of butterfly species in California.”
Climate change further complicates the picture. Warmer winters can disrupt monarch dormancy, while drought reduces milkweed growth. Increasingly severe weather may also kill overwintering butterflies. “It’s this perfect storm,” Laws sums it up.
With populations now so small, the risks grow larger. “Anytime a species’ population size gets very low, it makes them more vulnerable to extinction,” she explains. “You could have a bad winter, a bad storm, that knocks out the population to numbers so low that it can’t recover.”
Models suggest western monarchs face a high risk of extinction within decades if the decline continues.
Conservationists across the West are working to rebuild the butterflies’ habitat. One major effort focuses on restoring milkweed and nectar plants. A large initiative by the nonprofit River Partners aims to plant 15 million milkweed to expand monarch habitat along their migration routes. Native plant nurseries such as Heritage Growers are scaling up seed production to support these projects.
Large restoration projects are essential, but individuals can also make a difference.
At Xerces, Laws helps run a program that distributes free native plants and seeds to people willing to create pollinator habitat. “We realized we could do a lot more by working with other people who also wanted to create habitat,” she says. “Native plants can be expensive, and many people aren’t sure what to plant.”
Through the program, Xerces has provided nearly 300,000 plants to more than 840 projects across California — from farms and tribal lands to schools, parks and backyard gardens.
Roadsides are another opportunity. In some parts of the country, they are among the last remaining strips of habitat. Xerces staff now work with departments of transportation to restore native plants along highway corridors.
While many people spray their lawns out of habit or convenience, I know from experience that there’s another way. In Europe, where I grew up, I can’t recall a landlord ever calling pest control. Since moving to the U.S., I watch in disbelief the ubiquitous pest control trucks that spray neighbors’ yards monthly or even weekly. In Orange County, where I live, thousands of residents just organized a protest against the local government spraying creeks with pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate and succeeded in convincing the authorities to end the practice.
There is hope.
The story of western monarchs is not just about loss; the species can respond dramatically when conditions improve. The eastern monarch population in Mexico increased 64 percent this winter. “It is great news when the populations tick up from one year to the next, and we should celebrate that because it shows that this species has the ability to recover,” Laws says. “But the long-term trends that we’re seeing with both populations tell us that this species is in trouble. Monarchs won’t be out of the woods until we see overwintering numbers that stay high from year to year for an extended period. There is still a lot of work to be done to protect both populations.”
Conservation scientists and agencies have laid out a suite of strategies that, taken together, can help stabilize and rebuild populations.
According to Xerces, anyone can help by following a few simple steps: “growing pollinator-friendly flowers, providing nest sites and shelter, avoiding pesticides and spreading the word.”
More specifically:
-Plant native milkweed appropriate to your region and a variety of pesticide-free nectar plants that bloom across the seasons.
-Avoid using insecticides and herbicides in your yard; tolerate some “weeds” that may be valuable host or nectar plants.
-Support local and regional efforts to protect and restore overwintering sites and breeding habitat, through volunteer work, community science projects like monarch counts, or advocacy for pollinator-friendly land-use policies. Sacramento, for instance, implemented a city ordinance prohibiting the use of neonicotinoids on city property.
-Stay informed through reputable organizations such as the Xerces Society and Monarch Joint Venture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which publish updated guidance as science and conditions evolve.
-Participate in community science projects like the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper on the popular app iNaturalist.
At a larger scale, reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains critical for the long-term stability of all pollinators, including monarchs’ multi-generational journeys.
Whenever I need a dose of hope, I check my Monarch Butterfly Facebook group, which has 43,000 members. There, users with names like “Butterfly Babe” detail how to plant native milkweed and share small victories. They gently usher monarch larvae into specially built enclosures to nourish them in safety and show off the glorious offspring emerging from its chrysalis. They crochet monarch sweaters for themselves and ask advice for gluing a monarch’s broken wing back together using a toothpick and a tiny drop of adhesive. One user shared how she shelters injured butterflies indoors during cold snaps, feeding them watermelon juice and mashed fruit until they recover.
Citizen science, gardening and passion fuel the efforts. Laws believes that this enthusiasm may be one of the monarch’s greatest strengths. “This is a species that inspires people,” she said. “People love monarchs and feel very strongly about them.”
Back at Pismo Grove, a single monarch glides across the clearing and settles on a yellow flower. Its wings flash briefly in the morning sun.
It is only one butterfly. But it is also a reminder that the migration is not gone yet — and that thousands of people are working to bring it back.
Scrolling image credits: The first image is by Sandy and Chuck Harris; the second is by Harold Litwiler, both via Flickr. The final two images appear courtesy of River Partners. Both videos are by Lara Drizd via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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