<story><title>Migratory monarch butterfly now endangered</title><url>https://www.iucn.org/press-release/202207/migratory-monarch-butterfly-now-endangered-iucn-red-list</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grapeskin</author><text>&amp;gt; The western population is at greatest risk of extinction, having declined by an estimated 99.9%, from as many as 10 million to 1,914 butterflies between the 1980s and 2021.&lt;p&gt;Insane. I wonder if recovery is even possible without devoted breeding efforts. A population this small could easily be wiped out by birds or a single storm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frumper</author><text>Not that the population is doing great, but last years numbers rebounded to about a quarter million.  A 100x increase from the previous year.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;western-monarch-butterfly-numbers-rebound-in-santa-cruz-but-below-historic-levels&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;western-monarch-butte...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Migratory monarch butterfly now endangered</title><url>https://www.iucn.org/press-release/202207/migratory-monarch-butterfly-now-endangered-iucn-red-list</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grapeskin</author><text>&amp;gt; The western population is at greatest risk of extinction, having declined by an estimated 99.9%, from as many as 10 million to 1,914 butterflies between the 1980s and 2021.&lt;p&gt;Insane. I wonder if recovery is even possible without devoted breeding efforts. A population this small could easily be wiped out by birds or a single storm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>illwrks</author><text>My parents and their neighbours had plenty of flowers and suitable plants growing in their gardens. They live in a small tourist town in south west Ireland.&lt;p&gt;I have vivid memories as a child of what was likely thousands of monarch butterflies every summer, probably until I was 10 or so, in and around the flowers and plants. 
Then then open pastures behind my parents house were bulldozed and a private housing estate was built and at the same time my parents also tarred their front drive. From then on the butterflies started to dwindle significantly.
Those two events were the only great change in the immediate surroundings until twelve-or-so years later when a brutal winter killed a lot of the trees and plants.&lt;p&gt;Never again have I see as many in a single place.</text></comment>