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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

26/07/22 21:13 PM IST

Migratory monarch butterflies officially declared ‘endangered’

In News 
  • The migratory monarch butterfly, a sub-species of the monarch butterfly that travels around 4,000 kilometres across America each year, has been classified ‘endangered’ in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Reason for low population 
  • Habitat destruction and climate change biggest contributors, says International Union for Conservation of Nature
  • Monarchs, the most recognizable species of butterfly, are important pollinators and provide various ecosystem services such as maintaining the global food web.
  • These butterflies follow a unique lifestyle: They traverse the length and breadth of the American continent twice a year, feasting on nectar from a variety of flora. But they breed in only one particular plant — the milkweeds. The monarch larvae feed on this species on hatching.
  • The number of the western monarchs, which live west of the Rocky Mountains, reduced 99.9 per cent, falling to only 1,914 butterflies in 2021 from 10 million in the 1980s.
  • The population of the eastern monarchs that migrate from eastern United States and Canada — the bigger group — also shrunk 84 per cent from 1996-2014. 
  • Legal and illegal logging and deforestation to make space for agriculture and urban development has destroyed substantial areas of the butterflies’ winter shelter in Mexico and California.
Source- Down To Earth 

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