Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, the species appeared in Australia around 1871, when its food plants were introduced, Bunbury, Western Australia (Photo by: Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Volunteers counted nearly 250,000 western monarch butterflies during the annual Thanksgiving tally – a 100-fold increase from the year prior -- offering a glimmer of hope for the declining butterfly population.
However, conservation biologists with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation say it's too early to celebrate the jump, the highest count since 2016.
Last year's count resulted in just 2,000 of the black and orange butterflies, the lowest ever since the annual count began in 1997."We know that these monarch numbers can go up and down even in large swings, and we've seen that in the past," Western Monarch Lead Emma Pelton said. "Historically, we've never seen an increase of this large in a single year in terms of the increase from 2,000 to over 200,000.
But we've also never seen the population as small as it was last year. So insect numbers can do funky things, and we'll learn more as more years of data can have come in."One theory is that the weather offered a respite for the delicate insects.