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Endangered-species decision expected on beloved monarch butterfly

California Monarch Butterflies
Posted at 6:02 PM, Dec 14, 2020
and last updated 2020-12-14 18:03:02-05

America's beloved monarch butterfly is facing possible listing as a threatened species.

The Trump administration is expected to announce this week if it supports protecting the monarch under the endangered species act.

Climate change, development and heavy farm use of herbicides have wiped out well over a hundred million acres of monarch habitat.

And numbers of West Coast monarchs in particular have plummeted from the millions in the 1980s to the low thousands today.

Environmental groups say grassroots efforts to raise the monarchs' host plant, milkweed, aren't enough to save the orange and black butterfly in the global extinction crisis.