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In California, the number of monarch butterflies has dropped by 30 percent

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Every fall, monarch butterflies arrive from west of California's Rocky Mountains to wait out winter.

The orange and black insects are closely watched because the number of western monarchs coming to California each year has dropped dramatically since the 1980s, when it was common to see millions annually.

This past winter, scientists and volunteers went to more than 250 wintering sites across the state and counted about 233,000 butterflies, a 30 percent drop from the previous winter, according to a report released this week by the Xerces Association for the Conservation of Invertebrates.

The decline was likely caused by the severe storms that hit California in the winter of 2022, which may have been too intense for the insects to survive, said Isis Howard, who coordinates the count for the Xerces Society. That caused the breeding season to start last year with fewer butterflies, reducing the population that would return in the fall.

Monarchs were classified as endangered in 2022. A particularly steep decline began in the winter of 2018, when about 30,000 monarch butterflies overwintered in California, according to Emma Pelton, a monarch conservation biologist with the Xerces Society. Two years later, only 2,000 were counted statewide, and some of the groves that usually attract the most monarchs were devoid of them.

“The bottom fell out in 2020,” Pelton told me. The moment sparked a lot of “existential conversations in the monarch world” about whether the species would ever recover, she said. But in a “somewhat miraculous” turnaround, she added, the monarch population rebounded in 2021 to about 200,000, a figure comparable to this week's count.

There's a lot we don't understand about monarchs, so it's difficult to say for sure why their numbers fluctuate so drastically. But environmental factors such as changes in temperature and precipitation likely play a role. Experts generally believe that pesticide use, drought, climate change and habitat loss, due to deforestation and other causes, have all contributed to the species' long-term decline.

If you want monarchs to bloom, you can plant native flowering plants in your garden, including milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars eat. Make sure the plants you buy from nurseries are pesticide-free and limit your own pesticide use if possible.

California has agreed to use at least $2 billion intended for pandemic recovery to help students hurt by remote learning.



If you live in the Bay Area, chances are you cross a lot of bridges. Which one is your favorite, and why?

Tell us at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Please include your name and the city in which you live.


A Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety officer has built a reputation for solving some of the region's toughest and longest-running cold cases.

The detective, Matt Hutchison, 38, has solved eight cases in the seven years since he joined Sunnyvale's robbery and murder team. Hutchinson's unorthodox methods, especially in the face of scant evidence, have helped him solve some of the department's biggest cases, including the murder of Karen Stitt, a Palo Alto High School student who was murdered in 1982, some more stunned more than twenty department detectives. the years.

Even more remarkable, Hutchinson solved all of these cases in his spare time, when he was not busy with his regular duties.

Scott Ostler, a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, took a look at Hutchinson's impressive record in a recent profile. “It's magical things he does,” Rob Baker, Santa Clara County's deputy district attorney, told Ostler. “He has solved more cold cases in three years than any detective in the past fifteen years.”


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