Iconic butterflies are scarce as numbers hit the lowest ever recorded according to report

Something catastrophically wrong happened in 2018 to monarch butterflies.

Idaho wildlife biologist Ross Winton spent years working with monarch butterflies. With the help of volunteers, he would carefully put a tiny tag the size of a paper hole punch on about 30 to 50 of the iconic insects each summer in the Magic Valley. Then during the summer of 2018 he could only find two to tag.

“I saw two monarchs all season,” Winton said of 2018. “Most of the folks I’ve talked to in the Boise area were seeing very similar results. … It was a little disconcerting to be seeing that kind of a decline in one year.”

On Thursday, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation issued a report finding that the population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California had fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, the Post Register reported.