Amáda Márquez Simula, the mayor of Columbia Heights, explains how her focus on saving monarch butterflies has sparked community interest in environmental conservation.
Monarch butterflies are known as experts of climate adaptation, but it’s becoming much harder for them as global warming and logging hurt habitats where they breed and spend the winter.
The other end of the Monarch supply chain, in Mexico, to which the Monarchs migrate every winter, is largely destroying itself with the invaluable help of humans.
Butterfly numbers have dropped by one third in the last two decades in the US, echoing declines seen in Europe. These figures raise alarm bells for the health of other insect populations, because butterflies face similar environmental changes and are used as a proxy for studying insects in general.
Experts say the monarch butterfly could very well go extinct in the next 20 years. "If we want to have monarchs migrate through the western U.S., as they have for centuries, sustained work is needed,” the Xerces Society wrote on its website.
The march toward extinction appears to be nearing an end for monarch butterflies in California, whose numbers have declined precipitously over the last two decades.
