Photo: USFWSmidwest, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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North America’s monarch butterfly has been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The number of Western monarchs living west of the Rocky Mountains plunged by an estimated 99.9 percent between the 1980s and 2021. Eastern monarchs, which comprise most of North America’s population, dropped by 84 percent from 1996 to 2014. The new endangered status covers both populations.