""I'm most concerned that if the numbers continue to remain low, there's less opportunity for monarchs to bounce back," Isis Howard, a conservation biologist for the Xerces Society, told SFGATE."
""They need some good luck, and they need our action.""
The western migratory monarch population that shelters along California's coast has plunged to the third-lowest numbers on record, with the 2025–2026 tally finding about 12,260 monarchs across 250 sites. The population crashed to rock-bottom in 2020, rebounded slightly for a few years, then fell again in 2024. Drivers of the decline include climate change, habitat loss, and pesticides. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to protect monarchs under the Endangered Species Act in December 2024, after the Trump administration delayed the process amid efforts to weaken the law. Natural Bridges recorded the season's highest counts, and researchers attached about 100 ultralight radio tags with eyelash glue to butterflies to study winter movement.
Read at SFGATE
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