The Science Near Me blog is a partnership between Discover magazine and ScienceNearMe.org.
If you live in North America, chances are good that you’ve seen a monarch butterfly – if not highly enjoyed their pit-stops in your area. The black and orange beauties are a sure sign of the changing seasons, whether their arrival heralds spring, summer or fall where you live. With a flit, flit, float they glide over our gardens, looking for a sip of nectar or a milkweed leaf on which to lay their eggs.
But these special sightings are becoming more and more rare as the butterfly’s populations dwindle. The larger, eastern population of the butterflies declined by 84 percent from 1996 to 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports, while the smaller, western population has declined by nearly 99.9 percent since the 1980s.
Experts with the IUCN, which maintains the IUCN Red ...
