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Trump Extends Monarch Comment Period

LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- There will be a second public-comment period on a proposed rule to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday.

In December 2024, the Biden administration opened a public-comment period that ended on March 12, 2025. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will open a new 60-day comment period on Wednesday that will run through May 19, 2025, according to a news release.

The monarch has been at the center of numerous lawsuits filed by environmental and conservation groups across the years, focused on protecting species from agriculture chemicals including glyphosate, Enlist Duo and others.

The Trump administration said that comments previously submitted will not need to be resubmitted and would be "fully considered" in a final listing determination.

The Biden administration said in December that the proposal came about as the monarch's population numbers have been declining.

In North America, monarchs are grouped into two long-distance migratory populations including the eastern and western migratory population.

The eastern is the largest and overwinters in the mountains of central Mexico. The western population primarily overwinters in coastal California.

According to the USFWS, over 4.5 million western monarchs flocked to overwintering grounds in coastal California in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, an estimated 380 million eastern monarchs made the long-distance journey to overwintering grounds in Mexico, completing one of the longest insect migrations in the world.

"Today, the eastern migratory population is estimated to have declined by approximately 80%," the USFWS said in its December announcement.

The western migratory population has declined by more than 95% since the 1980s, putting the western populations at greater than 99% chance of extinction by 2080, according to the USFWS. During this same period the probability of extinction for eastern monarchs ranges from 56% to 74%.

The USFWS proposal includes conserving critical habitat for the species at a portion of its overwintering sites in coastal California.

The agency is proposing 4,395 acres of critical habitat for the western migratory monarch population across Alameda, Marin, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Ventura counties in California.

In 2014, the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety and others petitioned the USFWS seeking protection for the monarch, after the agency reported the lowest monarch count on record that year.

Information about how to submit comments can be found on regulations.gov by searching for docket number FWS-R3-ES-2024-0137, according to USFWS.