Canada, Mexico and the United States have agreed on a plan to protect and conserve the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus), outlining protective actions to be taken in each country.

According to the environment ministers of the three countries the species has become a symbol of North America's shared environment. During their annual meeting on June 26 in Ottawa they announced the North American Monarch Conservation Plan, which was developed within the framework of the tri-national, Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and contains detailed actions to be taken in each country.

The Monarch Butterfly is one of the best known and revered insects in North America. It is listed on CMS Appendix II. The annual migration of millions of orange and black monarchs is among the continent’s most spectacular natural events. According to a report of the Environmental News Service, each year millions of monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles back and forth from wintering grounds in Mexico to their breeding locations in the eastern United States and Canada.

In autumn, the adult butterflies that emerged in the north return to the same overwintering sites where their great-grand parents started their migration the previous spring. The monarchs return to just 12 forested mountaintops in central Mexico, where they form colonies in which millions of butterflies cluster on the trunks and branches of the trees. The western population overwinters in various sites in central coastal and southern California, notably in Pacific Grove and Santa Cruz. Despite protected areas and reserves, illegal logging and other human-induced environmental changes have damaged and depleted the unique, critical monarch habitat and pathway.

Although the butterfly is not in danger of extinction, its unique multigenerational migration spanning the continent is now recognized as an “endangered biological phenomenon” by IUCN. Since there are very few overwintering sites where the adults aggregate in great numbers, their populations become vulnerable. Logging, development, and agriculture are the most serious threats. Because monarchs depend upon a wide range of habitats in Canada, Mexico and the United States, conservation of the migratory monarchs requires trilateral cooperation due to threats to the butterflies' habitats throughout the flyway.

In 2007 the countries’ environment ministers in the CEC called for the development of a North American plan to protect the monarch. Its objective is to maintain healthy monarch populations and habitats throughout the migratory flyway, while promoting sustainable local livelihoods in the wintering grounds in Mexico. The CEC worked with local communities and stakeholders, as well as conservation officials and agencies across the region to advance trilateral work, including a Monarch Butterfly Sister Protected Area Network.

The CEC monarch butterfly conservation plan outlines a long-term collaborative agenda with nearly 60 specific actions. It aims to decrease or eliminate deforestation in the over-wintering habitat in south-central Mexico and California, addresses threats of habitat loss and degradation along the monarch's migratory routes as well as threats of loss, fragmentation and modification of breeding habitat. The plan also seeks to develop ways to promote sustainable livelihoods for people in and around key monarch habitats and calls for monitoring of monarchs throughout their flyway. The Monarch Butterfly conservation plan provides a detailed overview of the migratory patterns, lifecycle and current conservation status of this charismatic migrant.

The plan can be downloaded at: www.cec.org/monarch

An interactive Google Earth map of the monarch butterfly's range, along with those of 34 other species of common conservation concern, is at: http://www.cec.org/baatkas