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--></style></head><body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class="WordSection1"><h2><span lang="EN" style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">'Substantial probability' of monarch extinction -- study </span></h2><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><a href="http://www.eenews.net/staff/Corbin_Hiar">Corbin Hiar</a>, E&E reporter</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Published: Monday, March 21, 2016 </span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">There is "substantial probability" that the eastern population of monarch butterflies could be wiped out in the near future, according to a study published today in the journal <em><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Scientific Reports</span></em> that could affect the insect's status under the Endangered Species Act.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23265">analysis</a>, conducted by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the U.S. Geological Survey, estimated the probability of a "quasi-extinction" event, where so few butterflies remain that recovery is impossible, at between 11 percent and 57 percent over the next two decades.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">After a severe winter storm, a stretch of extreme temperatures or other such event, a few butterflies would survive for a short time. But extinction of the population as a whole would become "inevitable," the study said.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">There are about 150 million monarch butterflies today, down from 1 billion in the mid-1990s. The vast majority of the remaining monarchs live in the eastern portions of Canada, the United States and Mexico.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">"The cause of the recent decline has been predominantly attributed to the loss of breeding habitat, primarily in the U.S.," the study said.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants, the prevalence of which has declined with the adoption of herbicide-tolerant genetically modified corn and soybeans, researchers noted. Those GMO crops now account for 89 percent and 94 percent of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States, respectively.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Other threats to the orange and black butterflies include habitat loss in their Mexican wintering sites, climate change, insecticides, mowing regimes, invasive species and disease.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">"Increasing the average population size is the single-most important way to provide these iconic butterflies with a much-needed buffer against extinction," Brice Semmens, the lead author of the study and a scientist at Scripps, said in a statement. That can best be done by creating and restoring monarch breeding habitat, the study found.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The researchers' extinction risk estimate also differs substantially from an earlier analysis that found there is around a 5 percent chance that monarchs could vanish in the next century. But that study assumed monarchs could recover if reduced to 1,000 butterflies, a population size far below the 250,000 level at which monarchs' reproductive success begins to diminish, the Scripps-USGS team argued.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Some conservationists hope the new study will force the Fish and Wildlife Service to add the monarch to the threatened or endangered species list, a move that could require the agency to limit herbicide use on millions of acres of cropland.</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">"This study does put pressure on FWS to protect the monarch because it shows that the butterfly is at risk of extinction," Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an email. "More than 99 percent of monarchs are in the eastern migratory population."</span></p><p><span lang="EN" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">CBD and the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit last month that aims to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether the monarch butterfly should qualify for Endangered Species Act protections (<em><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><a href="http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060033806/">E&ENews PM</a></span></em>, March 10).</span></p></div></body></html>