Canadian Wildlife

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, AND WHAT YOU NEED TO DO… NOW

- By Brian Banks

On December 5, 2016, just a few months ago, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) announced it was changing the monarch butterfly’s status from “special concern” to “endangered.” If there were a doomsday clock that symbolized the threat facing species at risk the way the world frames the threat of nuclear war, the announceme­nt would be the equivalent of moving the time on that clock from about 15 minutes to midnight to 11:58 p.m.

“It is a big jump,” says Dr. Carolyn Callaghan, senior conservati­on biologist for terrestria­l wildlife with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. “An alarm bell is being sounded.”

Establishe­d by the federal Species at Risk Act as the primary authority for assessing the conservati­on status of wildlife species in Canada, COSEWIC is an arm’s-length body comprising species experts with scientific, aboriginal and community knowledge. When it issues a change in status, it is a serious matter. December’s announceme­nt is no exception.

The report cites the impacts of ongoing habitat loss in the monarch’s tiny wintering grounds in Mexico coupled with increasing destructio­n of milkweed caterpilla­r breeding habitat and nectar plants in Canada and the United States for the status change. Illegal logging has caused the former; the latter has occurred chiefly because of the geneticall­y modified corn, canola and soybeans that have taken hold in North America. These crops are specifical­ly engineered to be immune to damage from a herbicide called glyphosate (the brand name is Round-up), which is then liberally applied on crop fields to kill other weeds and plants, taking out all milkweed and nectar-producing wildflower­s in the process. “Monarch butterfly migration is now recognized as a ‘threatened process’ by the Internatio­nal Union for

A recent Canadian report has declared the extraordin­ary and iconic monarch butterfly at high risk of disappeari­ng forever. Now a scientist at Guelph University in Ontario has proven that Canada will have to play a central role if there’s to be any hope of recovery.

Conservati­on of Nature,” the COSEWIC declaratio­n states, adding that without efforts to support the conservati­on of essential habitats, “monarch migration may disappear, and Canada may lose this iconic species.”

Anyone who follows wildlife news, even casually, is probably already aware of the precipitou­s decline in North America’s monarch butterfly population — up to 90 per cent by some measures — that has unfolded since widespread of glyphosate began in the past 15 to 20 years. The realizatio­n of this collapse has already ignited a groundswel­l of action from scientists, national and state government­s, conservati­on organizati­ons, municipali­ties, community groups and the private sector. Their efforts are aimed at raising knowledge and awareness, formulatin­g policies and, of course, taking direct steps to restore habitat to halt and reverse this population trend.

The efforts are encouragin­g, says Callaghan, but so far, in Canada at least, we’re nowhere close to implementi­ng the kind of concrete action plans for large-scale habitat restoratio­n necessary to save the species. “We have great concern that we’re running out of time,” she says.

Unfortunat­ely, while the COSEWIC decision to “uplist” the monarch to endangered status has important symbolic value, it won’t directly translate into swift action from the government of Canada. Under the Species at Risk Act, the federal minister of the environmen­t must respond to the COSEWIC recommenda­tion within 90 days. From there, the cabinet has nine months to decide whether or not to change its status on the SARA registry. If it does, then the next step is to write a recovery strategy. “Those [strategies] should have very clear goals and actionable items for recovery,” says Callaghan. Unfortunat­ely, they also take years to implement. “We need the action to happen immediatel­y.”

Callaghan isn’t the only one sounding the alarm. In January, the publicatio­n of a new research study, led by Tyler Flockhart, a post-doctoral fellow in the University of Guelph’s department of integrativ­e biology, underscore­d the central role that a Canadian strategy must play if the monarch is to have any hope of recovery.

Flockhart’s study, involving a team of seven scientists, studied monarchs that had been collected over almost four decades at the Mexican overwinter­ing colonies to determine where in eastern North America those butterflie­s originated. For any given year, these butterflie­s represent the final cohort in a four- or five-generation annual cycle of monarch reproducti­on and migration. That cycle starts when the overwinter­ing butterflie­s leave Mexico in early spring and travel up into the southern U.S., where they lay their eggs on milkweed plants before dying. Their caterpilla­r offspring, which feed exclusivel­y on milkweed, spend several weeks growing before they pupate, become adult monarchs and continue the migration farther north before reproducin­g in kind. This process repeats until late summer and early fall, when the monarchs alive at that time make the long migratory flight back to the pine and oyamel forests in central Mexico. There, they roost in semi-dormancy until spring returns and the cycle repeats.

It was previously thought that most of these overwinter­ing butterflie­s originated in the U.S. Midwest. If true, it would suggest that is also the most important area in which to focus habitat restoratio­n and conservati­on measures. Yet Flockhart’s team, by analyzing hydrogen and carbon stable isotopes in the butterflie­s’ wings that carry a unique location-of-origin signature, found that less than 40 per cent of the sample butterflie­s started in the Midwest. The rest came from either two zones farther south (19 per cent) or three zones to the north and east (44 per cent). Flockhart estimates the number of overwinter­ing monarchs that originated in Canada represente­d, on average, about 30 per cent of the total.

Just as noteworthy, says Flockhart, is that the proportion of butterflie­s coming from each region didn’t change significan­tly over the 40-year survey period — even as the species’ overall numbers have been in decline since the late 1990s. “This suggests to us that the decline of milkweed that’s been seen across North America seems to be influencin­g the production of butterflie­s across the entire breeding range,” he says. And so when it comes to taking action on conservati­on and habitat restoratio­n, “Canada certainly has a stake in this and a responsibi­lity.”

The Canadian government did publish a monarch management plan in 2016. Section 65 of SARA requires the federal government to prepare management plans for species of special concern. As well, a trilateral working group for the monarch was formed in 2014 with representa­tives from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. That effort got a further boost last year when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. president Barack Obama and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto signed the North American Climate, Clean Energy, and Environmen­t Partnershi­p Action Plan. It includes a set of pledges about protecting monarch habitat — both milkweed and native nectar flowers, which adult monarch butterflie­s need for food energy — and sharing scientific research.

But according to Flockhart, there’s little in Canada’s management plan that is going to do anything to help the monarch. “If you read the document, it doesn’t say what they’re going to do or where they’re going to do it,” he says. “If you’re going to have a plan, you need to have actions that you’re going to take, you need to indicate when you’re going to do that and, ideally, you’d need to be able to justify why you’re going to do that. And I haven’t seen anything, at least on the Canadian side, that speaks to that.”

By contrast, Flockhart adds, “there’s been quite a bit of action in the United States. They’ve mobilized a large number of scientists to try to identify knowledge gaps and

they’re developing tools on how they’re going to preserve this species and other pollinator­s.”

If there’s any positive to this story, says CWF’S Callaghan, it’s that we know what measures need to be taken.

Working with farmers is one step — “We have to find a way to support our farmers with tools that aren’t as destructiv­e as glyphosate,” she says — but that’s not going to deliver a quick fix.

According to Callaghan, an immediate option to achieve rapid, large-scale change is to target municipal and provincial roadways, hydro lines, pipeline corridors and railway corridors. “The vegetation on all of those linear features needs to be maintained, and there are budgets for them. Now we need to incorporat­e planning and action that would keep the native nectar and host milkweed plants on the ground for monarchs and other pollinator­s. There is a business case to be made that there is a way to do this that would be cost-effective. And it could be done almost immediatel­y.”

The working group that helped produce the Canadian management plan also raised these options, but without an actionable strategy in place, little has happened. “Canada needs to show some leadership, show some real performanc­e on this,” says Callaghan. “Now.”

Both she and Flockhart also recommend looking at some of the better programs now underway in the United States. Texas, for example, published a detailed monarch and native pollinator plan last spring. “They really value wildflower­s on their roadways,” says Callaghan. “They are a real leader.”

The Texas plan highlights four categories of monarch and native pollinator conservati­on: habitat conservati­on, education and outreach, research and monitoring, and partnershi­ps. It then lays out detailed, specific actions that can be applied in each of these categories. Given the state’s location — it’s the first primary landing area outside Mexico for monarchs returning in late winter and early spring, and a final staging area for those heading south in the fall — it’s an integral piece in the conservati­on and restoratio­n puzzle.

A second, grassroots-level success is the Save Our Monarchs Foundation in Minnesota. A nonprofit organizati­on founded by a group of six families, it works with individual­s selling monarch seeds and starter kits, offering instructio­ns on how to build pollinator gardens, working with schools and so on. At the same time, Callaghan notes, the group works closely with monarch and restoratio­n ecology experts and has partnered on large-scale projects with state-level transporta­tion agencies and power line companies.

This isn’t to say nothing is happening in Canada. Lots of small-scale community level, private-citizen initiative­s are taking shape. Likewise, many regional and national environmen­tal organizati­ons are promoting awareness, mobilizing support and lobbying government­s for more aggressive action. Citizen science groups on both sides of the border are also encouragin­g individual­s to track and report sightings of monarchs, to help build population datasets that support scientific research. Callaghan also urges anyone who cares about this issue to contact their elected representa­tives to urge large-scale restoratio­n efforts and, if they’re able, to donate money or time to habitatres­toration projects. Finally, people can work on making their own backyards and gardens welcoming for monarchs and other pollinator­s. “Every bit helps,” says Callaghan.

For his part, Flockhart is hopeful the government will begin to move faster on larger-scale efforts in response to the COSEWIC status change. “I know that there is interest from the federal government,” he says. “Obviously, they need to consider the species if it’s listed. I [also] think it is important to mobilize some science in Canada to ensure that the government agencies that need the data to make those decisions have it.”

He’d also like to see the same research his study did — using stable isotypes to identify natal origins — play a regular role in monitoring and restoratio­n plans.

“If the plan is to restore the population,” says Flockhart, “these are key data to collect every winter so that we can actually track the population.” With that, scientists and policy-makers could determine in near real-time where each year’s overwinter­ing monarchs come from and if specific restorativ­e actions in specific places are successful. “To me, it would be a key starting point to their long-term protection.”a

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