Sign In
Learn bits
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 

More Related Current Affairs View All

22 Jan

Maha Kumbh: A confluence of faith and culture

'Kumbh, derived from a Sanskrit word which means a pitcher, is rotationally held every three years at the four riverside cities of Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik' The A

Read More

22 Jan

TRAI combating spams

'The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will be using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to register spam preferences from customers.' In order to fight the deluge of

Read More

22 Jan

Status of the Smart Cities Mission

'Almost a decade has passed since the Indian government announced the concept of “smart cities” as the new lighthouses of urbanisation.' The June 2015 announcement o

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps