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Louisiana teachers' union concerned about educators' future; Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump immunity case; court issues restraining order against fracking waste-storage facility; landmark NE agreement takes a proactive approach to CO2 pipeline risks.

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Speaker Johnson accuses demonstrating students of getting support from Hamas. TikTok says it'll challenge the ban. And the Supreme Court dives into the gray area between abortion and pregnancy healthcare, and into former President Trump's broad immunity claims.

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The urban-rural death divide is widening for working-age Americans, many home internet connections established for rural students during COVID have been broken, and a new federal rule aims to put the "public" back in public lands.

Feds Delay Listing Monarch Butterfly as Threatened Species

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Wednesday, December 16, 2020   

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The monarch butterfly will not be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act for at least a few more years, the federal government announced Tuesday, even though its populations have plummeted.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the monarch meets the criteria for listing, but limited resources mean other species will be listed first. Preliminary data from the annual Thanksgiving count of monarchs that overwinter on the California coast showed only 2,000 to 3,000 individuals. Dr. Arthur Shapiro, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California at Davis, said that number should be orders of magnitude higher.

"The entire California population has not exceeded 30,000 for the last two winters," he said, "and it looks like this year will be even worse. They should be more like 20 million or 30 million."

The reasons for the decline of this iconic orange-and-black butterfly still are being studied, but the culprits include losing habitat to development, pesticides and climate change. In addition, proliferation of parasite-prone non-native milkweeds in coastal areas may be leading the butterflies to breed early in the winter instead of the spring.

Dr. Cheryl Schultz, a biology professor at Washington State University at Vancouver, was part of a team predicting three years ago that if the monarch population dropped below 30,000, the species could spiral past the extinction threshold - the point at which there are too few individuals to keep it going. However, Schultz said she remains hopeful the species can be saved.

"With people working together and using the science," she said, "I think there's incredible promise, and resiliency of the monarch populations, to turn them around."

For now, the monarch will remain a "candidate species" to be listed in the future as threatened. The Endangered Species Coalition is asking butterfly enthusiasts to take a stand and call for protections for the monarch and other pollinators.


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