Monarch butterflies is key to ensure global food security for humans

And this beautiful butterfly is still declining. With the monarch population well below the threshold at which government scientists predict the migration could collapse, in March 2020 the Center and more than 100 other groups called on Congress to significantly increase funding to $100 million per year to help conserve monarch butterflies and their habitat. Monarchs' decline is a harbinger of widespread environmental change. The plummeting population of this familiar butterfly, along with the decline of many other butterflies and bees, threatens the wellbeing of people as well, because the food security of humans is dependent on the ecological services that pollinators provide. History shows a tragic record of the unexpected decline of abundant and widespread species. Complacency and false-positive assumptions about the resiliency of once-common species can have tragic consequences when we don’t take timely action to safeguard their populations.