Farm groups launch voluntary 'Farmers for Monarchs' effort

As monarch butterflies flutter on their 3,000-mile trek north to New York and Canada this spring, the nation’s farmers are being asked to help provide respite along the way. Farm groups, along with several agribusiness companies and conservation organizations, launched Farmers for Monarchs earlier this winter as part of a voluntary effort to restore the diminishing butterfly’s habitat.Through the winter, monarchs live in the forested mountains of Mexico, said Ryan Yates, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation. But last year, monarchs clumped in those forests covered just 2.2 hectares, he said. “It’s 20 percent of the size of what they were, on average, in the past 20 to 30 years,” he told a group of Kansas Farm Bureau members during a lobbying trip to Washington D.C. this spring.The voluntary push by farm groups stems from growing concerns about a potential listing of the butterfly. In August 2014, environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking that the monarch be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.