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--></style></head><body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">FROM: Monterey Herald</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="http://www.montereyherald.com/environment-and-nature/20161121/pacific-grove-its-time-for-the-monarch-count">http://www.montereyherald.com/environment-and-nature/20161121/pacific-grove-its-time-for-the-monarch-count</a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt">Pacific Grove: It’s time for the monarch count</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">By Sukee Bennett</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Pacific Grove >> With deep concentration, they direct their gaze up the trees that play host to slumbering butterflies, silently counting the orange insects until they share their tally with neighboring volunteers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">As monarchs flock to the verdant groves along the Central Coast this time of year, so do the volunteers and scientists, some of whom have been counting them religiously for 20 years.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">The Xerces Society Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, which is the oldest and most robust assessment of wintering monarch in California, started Nov. 12 and runs through Dec. 4. It’s one of the many ways the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group, works together with government agencies like U.S. Fish and Wildlife, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, farmers and citizens to study and protect the charismatic monarch butterfly, which has faced substantial declines in the past two decades.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“Monarchs are kind of the pandas of the insect world,” said Emma Pelton, a conservation biologist at Xerces. “We have a lot of beautiful butterflies here in America, but (the monarchs are) bigger and brighter.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Pelton, who has been interested in interactions between agriculture and wildlife for as long as she can remember, has been at Xerces for a little over a year — just long enough to participate in last fall’s annual monarch count. But scientists have been counting California’s wintering monarchs since 1997, when biologists Dennis Frey, David Marriott and Mia Monroe realized the species was declining.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Both longstanding and first-year volunteers spend four weeks, centralized around Thanksgiving, scouring sites where monarchs are known to converge, including the Monarch Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Del Monte Avenue in Monterey, the Moss Landing Middle School, the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, and Moran Lake and Manresa State Beach in Santa Cruz, and Pismo Beach. Volunteers count individual butterflies, pooling their results with other volunteers to form an average.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“It’s a little bit of a guessing game, but that’s why we like to have experienced counters mentor new counters,” Pelton said.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">They also assess the habitat, taking note of which trees appear most popular to butterflies and the availability of nectar-producing plants in the area.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">This year, Bill Henry, director of Groundswell Coastal Ecology, a Santa Cruz-based organization that works on coastal advancements through education and community-based work, is partnering with Xerces. Together, they’re developing a management plan for the monarch grounds at the Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Henry will also count the butterflies in northern Santa Cruz with Samantha Marcum, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife monarch butterfly coordinator.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Marcum, who is volunteering with Xerces for the first time, said, “Working with the Xerces Society is a really positive experience. They’re really good at bringing people together to preserve monarchs.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">And Henry believes Xerces and its partners have been fundamental in gathering data needed to make well-informed decisions about preserving monarchs, whose populations have declined 74 percent in the last 20 years in California, according to Xerces scientists.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“The length of the data is starting to get longer, and so you’re able to learn more about some of these patterns,” Henry said.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">But counting western monarchs in their winter habitat doesn’t tell the whole tale of their decline. To find out more, Xerces and U.S. Fish and Wildlife have just begun exploring where milkweed grows and where western monarchs breed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“Those are some areas where we’re lacking information,” said Marcum.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Scientists already know that monarchs aren’t solely slumbering on the Central Coast; they’re now breeding here, too.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“Year-round breeding is really new,” said Pelton, adding that the phenomenon was most likely spurred by climate change and people planting tropical milkweed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Monarchs are lighter sleepers than other hibernators like bears; they already move around in the winter months. And warmer winter temperatures, associated with climate change, may be putting them in the mood early.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Tropical milkweed, which locals sometimes plant in an effort to help monarchs, may provide habitat and sustenance for growing caterpillars. But there are problems. Tropical milkweed isn’t native to the Central Coast. And, as its name suggests, it grows like a weed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">“We don’t advocate people planting milkweed close to the coast,” Pelton said, adding that cultivating native pollinator species is a much better option.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">People can plant tropical milkweed with some success in the Midwest, where many eastern monarchs grow up. But California winters are too warm for the milkweed to ever die back. The plants end up carrying diseases that spread to the infantile insects eating them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Western monarchs raised on tropical milkweed usually have high disease loads, Pelton said. And they can transmit those diseases to healthy monarchs.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">But, despite the many threats they face, there’s a silver lining for monarchs. Now, more than ever, communities are coming together to help the species. The Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count is but one example.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">----------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Matthew Shepherd</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Communications Director</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><img border="0" width="128" height="48" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D24492.C8654640" alt="Xerces-logo-CMYK-email_Outlook"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Protecting the Life That Sustains Us</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Connect: <a href="http://www.xerces.org/">www.xerces.org</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/xerces.society/">Facebook</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/xercessociety">Twitter</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/xercessociety/?hl=en">Instagram</a> <a href="http://www.xerces.org/blog/">Blog</a> <a href="https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001HTk7N6nZumLPinBr8VACbNdTXCe732bGu6KpqC13JAKPti_HBe5xyr7t0p4mDfKe2dOsd-TB1qvv772s6GQfVa_SbKKfwBiwl4blH4KvCjq4dpmA2M9UNZ2axlQwu_1Gvjrl2Rb53WUZwsddwCzyorgxedLAaMy3">E-newsletter</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">628 NE Broadway, Suite 200, Portland, OR 97232, USA</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Office: (503) 232-6639 x110</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Cell: (503) 807-1577</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><a href="mailto:matthew.shepherd@xerces.org">matthew.shepherd@xerces.org</a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></body></html>