"SEATTLE --  The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and conservation groups launched a $3.2 million campaign on Monday to save the habitat of the embattled orange-and-black spotted monarch butterfly, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years.

The monarchs, renowned for migrating thousands of miles (km) over many generations from Mexico, across the United States to Canada, and then back again, have seen a loss in their habitat because of farming and urban sprawl.

The population of monarch butterflies, which peaked in the late 1990s at roughly 1 billion specimens, has fallen by 90 percent in recent years, according to the Center for Biological Diversity."

Eric M. Johnson reports for Reuters February 9, 2015. [2]