SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The final tallies are in, and it’s been another good year for monarch butterflies in California.
In total, 335,479 of the important pollinators were counted across 272 overwintering spots across the state from Nov. 12 through Dec. 4, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, an international nonprofit organization that organizes the counts annually.
That’s a notable jump from 2021, when 247,237 were counted in California, and 2020, when 1,899 were counted, according to the Xerces Society’s data.
“We can all celebrate this tally,” said Emma Pelton, a senior endangered species conservation biologist at the Xerces Society and the organization’s lead on western monarchs. “A second year in a row of relatively good numbers gives us hope that there is still time to act to save the western migration.”
The majority of the 335,000 monarch butterflies overwintered in groves in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
In Santa Barbara County, 137,464 monarchs were counted while 133,112 were counted in San Luis Obispo County, according to the Xerces Society. That’s up from the 97,025 in Santa Barbara County and 91,766 in San Luis Obispo County counted in 2021, the Xerces Society’s data show.
The remaining monarchs were spread out across overwintering sites along the Golden State’s coast.
“More than 250 people participated, which is really, really incredible and marks the greatest level of community engagement in the project’s history,” Isis Howard, an endangered species conservation biologist with the Xerces Society, said in a press conference Tuesday. “This important work is volunteer-powered ... and we truly couldn’t do this work without the dedicated community of volunteers, partners and funders.”
Among San Luis Obispo County sites, the Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove saw the highest number of local overwintering monarchs with 24,128 counted. It was also the third-largest site in the state.
The area around Canopy Trail in Montaña de Oro State Park was second with more than 13,000 monarchs overwintering, according to the Xerces Society’s data.
Other popular monarch overwintering sites in the county included the area off Highway 1 at Cayucos Creek Road, the Morro Bay Golf Course, Main and Surf streets in Morro Bay, and Fiscalini Ranch Preserve in Cambria, according to the Xerces Society.
Two spots in Santa Barbara County had the highest counts statewide with a site owned by The Nature Conservancy coming in at No. 1 with 34,180 monarchs.
Monarch butterflies number improving, is it the beginning of a trend?
The 2022 count reflects a second year of rebound from devastatingly low numbers in 2020.
Researchers are still attempting to understand why monarch butterflies saw such a massive decline in population in 2018, 2019 and 2020, but it’s been difficult, according to Pelton.
“We get asked a lot: Do two relatively good years in a row mean that we’ve turned the story around?” she said during the Tuesday news conference. “As it’s really tempting to say, ‘yes,’ we’ve seen such wild swings in the population over the last 5-10 years, that I really don’t think two good years in a row is indication of a trend. It could just be a blip.”
Pelton mentioned that it’s estimated the western monarch butterfly population is down about 90% from historical numbers seen in the late 1990s.
“We need to take this second chance and the fact that they came back up to low 100,000s, and run with it,” she said. “Hopefully, (we can) double down on some of those conservation measures when it comes to restoring breeding habitat, restoring and protecting overwintering sites, reducing our reliance on pesticides, and making all of his habitat more resilient to climate change.”
January storms likely caused higher mortality of monarch butterflies
Despite the encouraging numbers from the fall count, the early January storms likely had an impact on the overwintering butterflies, Pelton added.
The insects typically stay in groves of eucalyptus or Monterey pine trees to conserve energy before migrating north and east to breed in late January and into February. So when the storms hit, the monarchs were likely still clinging to the trees in the grove.
The Xerces Society conducts a “New Year’s count” annually in January to measure how many monarch butterflies remain in overwintering spots. It’s typical to see lower numbers in the New Year’s count, Pelton said, but she worried that the severe storms that hit the state may have hurt the butterflies.
“I do think we’re going to have seen probably higher-than-usual mortality this winter, because of the severity of these storms,” Pelton said.
That’s because the monarchs could have been blown down from the trees during the high winds, or drowned from the flooding that devastated many areas, Pelton said.
Pelton noted that although we cannot control the weather, humans can control the habitat availability.
“We continue to have sites threatened and being actively developed, having trees cut because people don’t seem to value or be aware of the habitat’s importance for the butterflies, especially when there are non-native eucalyptus trees,” she said.
Monarch butterflies are classified as endangered by the renowned International Union for Conservation of Nature, but lack similar designation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has designated the pollinators as imperiled and vulnerable and therefore protected.
The species’ decline in recent years has prompted Congress to allocate $10 million to monarch butterfly and other pollinator conservation. The $2-million-per-fiscal-year federal grant program is available to Native American tribes and state departments of transportation to carry out pollinator-friendly practices on roadways and highway rights-of-way.
San Luis Obispo County residents can help the western monarch population by planting native nectar plants in their yards. For those who live at least five miles away from the coast, native milkweed is a good plant to encourage monarch breeding, according to the Xerces Society.
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