Monarch Butterflies Are Getting Royally Screwed, Conservationists Contend

Monarch butterflies once turned the eucalyptus grove at Goleta’s Ellwood Mesa a vivid, flickering orange. But this year, like the last, you’d be lucky to catch a single glimpse of orange wings among the greenery.

It is the same story again: These bugs can’t catch a break. 

Earlier this month, officials counted just one lonely monarch at Ellwood. Numbers have been so consistently sparse that biologists skipped some scheduled surveys ahead of the final tally.

“This is a very low population year for monarch butterflies across California,” said biologist Charis Van der Heide, who has been tracking them at the Goleta grove.

Overwintering monarchs — migrating from their summer breeding grounds to California to ride out the cold — rely on a “safety in numbers strategy,” Van der Heide said. In low population years, that strategy goes out the window.

Heavy storms in January and February did not help their chances, either. 

The low numbers at Ellwood mirror a crisis across California. As populations plummet, environmental groups are pressing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to list the monarch as an endangered species. 

The monarch was proposed in 2024 for the Endangered Species List, which would trigger federal protections for their dwindling populations. A final decision was due in December 2025. That never happened. 

Now, the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety are suing the service, trying to force officials to set a binding date for the butterfly’s listing. 

The delay, conservationists say, increases the risk of the “beloved pollinator” going extinct. 

The western monarch population is down more than 95 percent since the 1980s. Across the California coast, there were only 12,260 monarchs counted this year. That’s the third-lowest tally ever recorded.

So why the delay? “Political nonsense” on behalf of the Trump administration, according to Tierra Curry, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species co-director. Officials listed it as a “long-term action,” putting monarchs in bureaucratic limbo alongside hundreds of other imperiled species. 

It could, in part, be blamed on the hacking and slashing of federal environmental agencies. The Fish and Wildlife service lost 18 percent of its staff last year, including more than 500 scientists, and the Endangered Species Act budget was slashed to 2004 levels.

In 2025 not a single plant or animal was protected under the Endangered Species Act for the first time since 1981, according to the center. 

Forgoing federal protection does not bode well for monarchs, which are royally screwed from all sides. 

Their initial decline was catalyzed by a widespread loss of milkweed, the caterpillar’s sole food source, thanks to increased use of herbicides on corn and soybeans. Additionally, climate change is damaging the forests where monarchs roost, extreme weather is messing with their migrations, development is destroying their wildflowers, and avocados are replacing their habitat. 

Of the ones that are left, they run the risk of being hit by cars. 

This adds up to a stark possibility. A federal assessment found that western migratory monarchs face a 99 percent chance of extinction within the next 60 years.

“The Service must finalize monarchs’ protections from their threats, including and especially pesticides, which have been a major driver of their rapid decline,” said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case. “The Service’s duty is to protect monarchs not corporations.”

For now, the butterflies’ fate remains uncertain. “We wait,” said Curry, “for the Service to agree to a date to finalize the listing or for a judge to force them.”

But there is still hope. 

Monarchs have rebounded before. After hitting historic lows in 2020, they were able to bounce back the next year. There is a possibility that they will rebound next season, Van der Heide said. 

To help, she said, people can plant winter-flowering nectar plants and native milkweed in the spring.

“It is always a treasure to see even one monarch’s bright wings fluttering through the forest and our garden,” she said. 

Recent visitors to Ellwood may be scratching their heads over the low count. What were those stray flashes of orange they saw, then? They’re butterflies — just scattered and easy to miss. 

In low-population years, monarchs spread out, drifting beyond known roosting sites and eluding standard surveys.

“These are likely the few monarchs that people see flying around Ellwood Mesa despite having an official count with zeros,” she said. 

Van der Heide said they also suspect there is a separate, winter-breeding population in Santa Barbara and California, which may or may not mix with migratory monarchs. But those resident butterflies need more study.

Meanwhile, the future of monarchs in Santa Barbara hangs by a thread.