Monarch Butterflies on Track to Receive Federal Protection by 2030

Monarch butterflies once flocked in large numbers to Goleta every fall to wait out the winter. But over the last two years, that flood has been reduced to a trickle. 

Last year, only 20 butterflies were counted across Goleta’s butterfly grove at the Ellwood Mesa Open Space during the overwintering season, which runs from October to February. In previous years, that number sometimes exceeded 20,000. 

Now, after decades of decline — the western migratory population is down 95 percent since the 1980s — the butterflies are on track to receive federal protection by 2030.

It’s taken far longer than environmentalists had hoped. 

Fewer and fewer monarchs now hang from the branches of California’s eucalyptus trees, where they’ve historically roosted. Instead, they hang in bureaucratic limbo, ever since conservationists first sought federal safeguards for the butterflies in 2014.  

The butterflies were eventually placed on a candidate waiting list for protection in 2020. The monarch was then proposed for protection in December 2024, making the final listing due in December 2025. 

However, under the Trump administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service never finalized those protections.

The butterflies’ proposed “threatened” status never went into effect, withholding species protections against driving threats such as habitat loss and pesticides. The current administration has protected far fewer species under the ESA than its predecessors, conservationists note. Instead, it has worked to weaken the ESA by issuing directives to allow for the incidental killing of endangered species and reducing staffing of the Fish and Wildlife Service by 36 percent.

Frustrated, the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety — a nonprofit that opposes potentially harmful agricultural practices, such as herbicide use — sued the service to force officials to set a binding date to finalize protections for monarchs. 

On September 30, the service agreed to issue a final listing determination by June 6, 2030, satisfying the lawsuit.

That’s still years later than what was originally proposed. 

“Monarchs are migrating south right now bringing joy to everyone who sees them, but punting their protection for years magnifies the risk that we could lose these migratory wonders,” said Tierra Curry, endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. 

“Butterflies are the latest victims of the dumpster fire this administration is trying to make of the Endangered Species Act,” she said. 

Time is of the essence, the groups argued. They cited a federal assessment of the monarch’s status that found that in the next 60 years, eastern monarchs have up to a 74 percent chance of going extinct and western monarchs have up to a 99 percent chance of being lost forever. 

But while the butterflies await federal protection, people on the ground are picking up some of the slack. 

There is a local movement to revive the butterflies in Goleta by protecting and restoring their habitat at Ellwood. And scientists are tagging the few that do flutter through the park with tiny Bluetooth “backpacks” to better understand their migratory patterns. 

Scientists, and the City of Goleta, are hopeful the butterflies will bounce back. “We are clearing dead and dying trees, restoring habitat, planting thousands of new trees, and tracking individual monarchs to learn where they go,” it states on the city’s website. “These efforts will help us ensure the grove will provide what the butterflies need for generations to come.”

Right now, the butterflies are due back at Ellwood for the overwintering season, which lasts from early October through February. The city tracks biweekly monarch counts on its website here.