The Western Monarch: Struggling for Survival

The Monarch Butterfly Story...

Monarchs face many risks that are resulting in declining populations in both the eastern and western parts of their North American range. The largest impacts come from the loss of habitat for breeding, migrating, and overwintering. In addition, pesticides that are used to control insects and weeds have harmful unintended consequences for monarchs, a changing climate may be making some habitat less suitable and forcing changes in migratory patterns, and monarchs face many risks from natural enemies, such as predators, parasitoids, and diseases.

The loss of milkweed in agricultural fields is a major cause of decline in monarchs, though there are other factors contributing to the decline in milkweed availability. Herbicide application and increased mowing in roadside ditches and agricultural margins is eradicating milkweed habitat even more from rural areas.

The Project:

The Coastal Program, the Monarch Joint Venture and the Pacific Southwest Region's Office of External Affairs was looking for ways in which to tell the success story of the western monarch butterfly.

Using the DataBasin Web Gateway and ESRI's Story Map Journal application, we were able to merge mapping services, narrative story telling, still photo and video imagery and social media channels into a single package.

The result is a set of maps the reside inside the Pacific Southwest Region Mapping Gateway, which are included and served to the ESRI story map package. All of these items are shown in the final Story Map Journal here: http://arcg.is/1d1Q1EO