A new scientific study is warning that dramatic long-term declines in the population of eastern monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) could doom the species to extinction, and a Connecticut expert said Monday that surveys in the state back up those findings.
"Last year, we saw zero monarch butterflies," Jay Kaplan, director of the Roaring Brook Nature Center in Canton, said of an annual butterfly survey done in the Farmington River Valley. "It was the first time since we started doing the count [more than 20 years ago] that we had zero monarchs." The eastern monarch butterfly population in North America plunged by 84 percent between the winter of 1996-97 and the winter of 2014-15, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The research by a team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey indicated there is now a "substantial probability" that the eastern monarch is on the road to extinction over the next 20 years unless the population decline can be reversed.
Source: Hartford Courant, March 21, 2016
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-monarch-butterfly-extinction…
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