On August 26, 2014, The Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and renowned monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed a legal petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) seeking Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have dropped dramatically over the past two decades.

The undersigned companies and organizations write to you to express support for that legal petition and protecting the monarch butterfly as a threatened species under the ESA. The North American monarch butterfly population has declined by 90 percent in the past 20 years, dropping from a high of approximately 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to less than 35 million butterflies last winter – the lowest number ever recorded.