News and headlines regarding the declining population status of western monarchs are ironically abundant. Monarchs are currently under review for protection by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to documented declines in their over-wintering population counts, particularly in the Western United States. Given this development, scientists have recently focused their efforts on discovering possible reasons for the decline and what factors might ultimately influence species success.

National Geographic: We’re Losing Monarchs Fast - Here’s Why

The New Yorker: Vanishing Flights Of The Monarch Butterfly

High Country News: The West’s Monarch Migration Is Disappearing

Current Migration News and Counts:

In January 2019, numbers were reported from California’s annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. In the west, we hit a discouraging record low of 28,429 monarchs from 213 sites, according to the Western Monarch Count Resource Center. This is below the 30,000 “quasi-extinction threshold” predicted to indicate the beginning of a species in peril.

As the 2019 fall migration begins, numbers are just starting to trickle in. Journey North tracks the migration and reports findings for both eastern and western monarch populations in the US. More information on upcoming migration counts should be available soon.