Enviros, Food Groups Want Endangered Listing for Monarch Butterfly

"A coalition of environmental and food-safety groups is asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to grant endangered species protection to the monarch butterfly, whose U.S. population, the groups say, last year fell to 90 percent below its 20-year average.

In apetition asking for the designation, which would allow the federal government to more aggressively protect the butterfly and its habitat, the petitioners blamed Monsanto Co.'s Roundup herbicide and Roundup Ready crops for much of the decline.

'The vast majority of genetically engineered crops are made to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, a uniquely potent killer of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar's only food,' the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety and the Xerces Society said in a joint statement, also signed by monarch scientist Lincoln Brower of Virginia's Sweet Briar College."

Chuck Raasch reports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch September 1, 2014.