Iowa launches plan to save threatened Monarch butterflies

Iowa took a large step Monday toward helping the recovery of monarch butterflies, with the introduction of a strategy designed to help keep the threatened insects off the national endangered species list.

The 135-page plan helps provide farmers, backyard gardeners and others with a road map for boosting monarch butterfly habitat in Iowa.

Nearly 40 agriculture, conservation, business, utility and government groups, calling themselves the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, pulled together the strategy.

"It's a big first step. Now we have a foundation to build on," said Steve Bradbury, an Iowa State University entomologist and strategy team leader.

About $4 million has been invested in building research, adding demonstration habitat plots and other initiatives since 2014. The consortium hopes the group's work will attract more, with $1.3 million in grants already being sought.

It's unclear exactly how many habitat acres Iowa needs to add to help avoid monarch butterflies' addition to the national endangered species list, Bradbury said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is pulling together that data for states, regions and nation in the weeks ahead.

The Obama administration estimated the nation needs about 7 million acres in pollinator habitat, an amount that's likely to grow, experts said.

In 2014, environmental groups petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act. The service has until June 2019 to determine whether to add Monarch butterflies.

The petitioners say farming in the Midwest is among the reasons for monarch's decline. Over the past two decades, the monarch population has declined about 80 percent.

The petition points to the "nearly ubiquitous adoption" of glyphosate-resistant corn and soybeans for causing "a precipitous decline of common milkweed, and thus of monarchs, which lay their eggs only on milkweeds.

"The majority of the world’s monarchs originate in the Corn Belt region of the United States, where milkweed loss has been severe," said the Center for Biological Diversity, The Xerces Society and other petitioners.

The Iowa consortium, with agri-businesses Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont-Pioneer and Syngenta as members, is looking for solutions, Bradbury said.

"We have a challenge. And everyone has a role to play" and expertise to provide, he said, adding that the consortium members began talking about a strategy before the petition was sent to the federal government.

Bill Northey, Iowa's ag secretary, said the group will ask farmers to grow pollinator habitat in areas where fields are unproductive. "The best way to avoid monarchs being listed as an endangered species is for everyone to engage," Northey said.

Discovery of the invasive weed Palmer amaranth in conservation acres planted to pollinator habitat last fall could make farmers reluctant to add monarch habitat, said Northey and others.

But the state is working to provide controls to prevent Palmer amaranth seed from making its way into conservation plantings, Northey said.

"We're unlikely to see the same kind of situation that brought Palmer seed to us," Northey said, adding that ISU and other groups are working with farmers to control the fast-growing weed from spreading.

About 623,000 acres in Iowa are planted to pollinator habitat through four federal conservation programs, the Iowa Office of Farm Service Agency said.

Altogether, Iowa farmers and landowners received $293 million last year to create nearly 1.9 million acres of pollinator habitat. Farmers kicked in $55.3 million.

"We're not asking farmers go grow milkweed between their corn and soybean rows," Bradbury said.

But as a leading producer of corn and soybeans, Iowa farmers can grow the habitat needed to help monarch butterflies recover to a stable population, he said.