Description

Registration:     Webinar Registration - Zoom

When a species is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, it receives various protections — what impact could those protections have on agriculture?

That’s the question following the December 2024 proposal from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the monarch butterfly as threatened under the ESA. Among other factors in its declining numbers, agricultural production and land use impact the butterfly by reducing milkweed habitat through land conversion and pesticide use, which disrupts their breeding and migration.

“This process began at least as far back as 2014 when various environmental groups submitted a petition to FWS to list the monarch butterfly,” said Brigit Rollins, staff attorney at the National Agricultural Law Center. “A decade later, FWS agreed, proposing to list it as a ‘threatened’ species.”

Rollins will discuss what the designation of “threatened” means, as well as other components of the proposed listing and which aspects of the proposal would especially impact agriculture.