Danaus plexippus, the monarch butterfly (Wikimedia Commons/docentjoyce)

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety today filed a petition with the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the monarch butterfly.

The two centers said the monarch has declined more than 90 percent in less than 20 years — from 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to 35 million butterflies last winter.

During the same period it is estimated that these once-common iconic orange and black butterflies have lost more than 165 million acres of habitat — an area about the size of Texas — including nearly a third of their summer breeding grounds.

“The butterfly’s dramatic decline is being driven by the widespread planting of genetically engineered crops in the Midwest, where most monarchs are born,” the Center for Biological Diversity said in a news release.

“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 dramatic surge in Roundup use with Roundup Ready crops has virtually wiped out milkweed plants in midwestern corn and soybean fields.”

▪ Petition to Protect the Monarch Butterfly Under the Endangered Species Act