Where Did the Butterflies Go? 

The population of western monarch butterfly has rapidly declined in the past three decades. Their numbers were over a million in the 1990s, but in recent years, only a couple hundred thousand butterflies remain. Monarch butterflies face many threats such as fragmentation, pesticides, habitat loss, and climate change. Even with plentiful data and science demonstrating their decline and threat of extinction, they are still not federally protected in the United States.