NEW YORK, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- The Western population of the monarch butterfly has declined to a near-record low with fewer than 10,000 found living in U.S. California this winter, a foreboding sign for the future of the beloved black-and-orange insect, reported the Los Angeles Times on Friday.
An annual count recorded 9,119 butterflies this winter, according to results released by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. This is the second-lowest population recorded since tracking began in 1997. An all-time low of fewer than 2,000 monarchs was recorded in 2020.
The society said these numbers underscored the importance of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's new proposal to list the butterfly as a federally endangered species, noted the report.
The butterfly's Western population has plummeted more than 95 percent since the 1980s, when up to 4 million butterflies were estimated to spend winter in California, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Without urgent conservation efforts, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the Western population faces a 99 percent chance of extinction by 2080.
