On April 8, 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the finalization of a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for the monarch butterfly. Authorized by the Endangered Species Act, a CCAA is a voluntary conservation agreement that addresses the conservation needs of at-risk species before they are listed as endangered or threatened. Under the agreement, more than 45 transportation and energy companies and numerous private landowners will participate in monarch butterfly conservation by providing habitat along energy and transportation rights-of-way corridors on public and private lands across the country. This will provide potentially millions of acres of overwintering habitat for the monarch butterfly with the goal that listing under the ESA will become unnecessary. A Perkins Coie team including Don Baur, Bill Malley, Bob Maynard, Anne Beaumont, Cassie Roberts, Christina Bonanni and Sheri Pais represented the Monarch Butterfly CCAA Task Force, which prepared the CCAA.
As reflected in our earlier report (How Developers Can Help Save the Monarch Butterfly and Why They Should), long-term declines in the population of monarch butterflies have significantly increased the probability that they may become extinct in the near future. A U.S. Geological Survey and Scripps Institution of Oceanography study found that the Eastern migratory monarch population declined by 84 percent between 1997 and 2015, indicating a substantial probability of “quasi-extinction” over the next two decades. A quasi-extinct population is one with so few remaining individuals that recovery is effectively impossible — while the remaining numbers may survive for a brief time, the population as a whole will inevitably become extinct.
Research indicates that the most effective way to increase monarch butterfly numbers is to focus on restoration of their breeding habitat in the northern U.S. and southern Canada. Monarchs depend on several species of milkweed to provide food for developing larvae. Milkweed has declined precipitously as a result of a combination of herbicide use, climate change, insecticides (including neonicotinoids) and other factors.
Continue Reading U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Approves Historic Agreement for Protection of Monarch Butterflies