KDSN RADIO News
Survey shows monarch numbers are rising and Iowans can help
A new population report on monarch butterflies finds conservation efforts in Iowa and elsewhere are starting to show promising results.
Mykayla Hagaman, a program specialist at the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, says researchers track the progress of the vital orange-and-black insect by measuring how much land the pollinators take up when overwintering in Mexico.
“They occupied 4.4 acres, which is nearly double last year’s size of about 2.2 acres,” Hagaman says, “so, this is really encouraging to see this increase.”
The annual survey from the World Wildlife Fund-Telcel Foundation Alliance demonstrates a sizeable boost in monarch numbers, but it’s still a long way from where the experts say the population needs to be.
“It does highlight the need for continued voluntary conservation efforts,” Hagaman says. “Scientists recommend to maintain a sustainable population of monarchs, we need, on average, about 15 acres of overwintering habitat, but we haven’t really seen those numbers since about 2018.”
About 40 percent of all monarchs that overwinter in Mexico are estimated to come from Iowa and neighboring Midwestern states. In recent years, many thousands of Iowans have carved out portions of their properties to offer a haven for the butterflies, but Hagaman says additional help is needed.
“We can do so through establishing more monarch habitat,” Hagaman says. “Monarch butterflies really rely on people planting native milkweed, such as common milkweed or butterfly milkweed, and there’s other species that are native to Iowa as well. So people can go online and search up what milkweed are native to their areas.”
She says plantings should include a variety of native species that bloom from early spring to late fall, to help provide nectar resources for monarchs during their migration.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the monarch as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in December of 2024.
