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Conservation group applauds proposed monarch listing

The legal director at the Center for Food Safety says a proposal to list monarch butterflies as threatened under the Endangered Species Act is a win.

George Kimbrell says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision comes after decades of advocacy.

“Monarch butterflies, an iconic species, have seen a dramatic decrease in their numbers in recent years.”  He says, “I think it’s tremendous that they are going to get the protection they need to avoid extinction.”

He tells Brownfield their organization believes it’s also a significant step.

“It’s also important as a precedent for what it represents, which is the impacts of industrial agriculture and pesticides, and their broader impacts to the environment and how that’s a driving force of the extinction crisis that we’re seeing,” he says.

If the proposal is finalized, Kimbrell says monarchs will gain protection as well as a recovery plan and ongoing funding to restore their habitat.

“The domination for the last several decades, since the late ‘90s, of Roundup Ready crop systems, glyphosate is a particularly potent killer of milkweed, which is the monarch caterpillars’ home and food source.”  He says, “And so, for the numbers in the Midwest, that’s been the major driver.”

He expects a public comment period to open soon and says a final decision could come in 2025.

Monarchs were placed on the candidate waiting list for protection in 2020.

The National Cattleman’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council in a joint statement to Brownfield say USFWS must increase partnerships with producers throughout the process and the plan must recognize the voluntary conservation work that farmers and ranchers do every day.

AUDIO: George Kimbrell – Center for Food Safety

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