Nationally and internationally, there is agreement that monarch populations are in steep decline and that action is necessary for their recovery. In December of 2020, the monarch status under the Endangered Species Act was listed as warranted but precluded.

Models have identified the need to plant more than a billion milkweed plants and restore or enhance of 7 million acres of land (slightly less area than Maryland) with diverse pollinator friendly plants in the next several years. The majority of these plantings will need to be in the Midwest as that is the best breading area for the monarch. Nebraska landowners and conservation practitioners are making great strides for Monarch conservation and pollinator restoration.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is no longer using the milkweed tracker website to register your pollinator site, as better tools have been developed. If you are still interested in informing conservation and management, we encourage you to register your site with the app HabiTally. HabiTally was developed by Bayer, The Climate Corporation, and Iowa State. The app is easy to use and the data are fed directly into in the Monarch Conservation Database, one of the primary sources of data for the listing decision of the monarch butterfly.