As the only butterflies known to make a roundtrip migration like birds do, migratory monarch butterflies are used to traveling. Those that live in the Midwest migrate thousands of miles each fall to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, returning in spring.

But last week, the migratory monarch found itself in a brand new and less desirable place: in the “endangered” category on the Red List of Threatened Species. Maintained by the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the list currently includes more than 147,500 species. Of them, more than 41,500 are, like migratory monarchs, “threatened with extinction.”

Read the full Cap Times story by Natalie Yahr, July 30, 2022