Confirmed: Monarchs back in bigger numbers
After encouraging signs that more monarch butterflies were returning to Pacific Grove for overwintering than in previous years, the creatures’ massive comeback is now clear.
Nearly 250,000 butterflies were observed across the West, according to the Xerces Society’s 2021 Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count that was announced on Tuesday. This number is more than 100 times that of 2020’s count, in which less than 2,000 butterflies were spotted from Mendocino to Northern Baja, Mexico. It’s also the highest count since 2016.
In Monterey County, volunteer community scientists recorded about 14,000 butterflies, according to Natalie Johnston, the volunteer and community science coordinator of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. After not seeing any monarch clusters at the Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in 2020, she was excited to see the rising number of butterflies in 2021.
“The first count (in early October) went from one lone monarch at the monarch sanctuary to about 1,300 the next week,” she said. The count continued to climb until early November, when it reached 13,700, then remained steady through the season.
Although a team of five volunteers regularly keep track of monarch numbers at the sanctuary, the data published in the Thanksgiving Count comes from a collaborative county-wide effort. Community scientists from Moss Landing all the way to Big Sur donned their binoculars to count butterflies at sunrise before the air temperature rose enough for the critters to start fluttering about.
While the bounceback in monarchs is tremendous, the number pales in comparison to the tens of millions of butterflies historically seen across the West. Last year’s count could be a result of minor factors having a more extreme effect because the population is so small, according to Johnston.
As for the future, she says it’s hard to predict what will happen next. In 2019, the Xerces Society reported a similar resurgence in the eastern population of monarch butterflies. But that number dropped again the following year.
Johnston is hopeful, however, that individual choices have made a difference.
“What I’ve noticed, just from talking with people who are at the monarch sanctuary,” she said, “is that 2020 was a year when many people made personal changes to their lives, such as redoing their gardens to have more native species, working to build more community gardens or paying more special attention to things that they could do.”
She remains confident that individuals are moving in the right direction to help this iconic insect and other pollinators. More people are becoming aware of actions they can take to support these populations, she said, and the government is also taking measures, such as planting native species along the highways.
Because of 2021’s massive jump in monarch butterflies, she said, “now we have people who are filled with hope and who can see the effects of monarchs’ ability to bounce back if given the chance.”
