For the past three years, more than 200,000 western monarch butterflies spent their winters along the California coast — huddling together in tall tree groves, finding respite from the wind from November to February.

But this winter, volunteers from the Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental group, tallied just 9,119 western monarchs — a dramatic 95% plunge and the second-lowest recording since the count first began in 1997. While the butterfly’s population has been declining for years, the finding still has some biologists and California park advocates worried.

Randy Widera, director of programs for California State Parks Foundation, said: “No matter where you come from in California, monarchs are around. … The thought of them being gone is heartbreaking.”

Habitat loss, pesticides and severe weather due to climate change are some of the reasons the butterflies are under threat.

The atmospheric rivers in 2023, for example, caused their numbers to dip.

Recently, the Palisades fire burned vegetation at Lower Topanga Creek in Topanga State Park that supplies nectar to the butterflies, California State Parks spokesperson Jorge Moreno said in an email.

Western monarch butterflies are considered an iconic species because of their beloved status among the public and for their critical role in the food web, said Emma Pelton, a biologist at the Xerces Society. Besides being pollinators, they’re food for birds, insects and some mammals.

Their migration also attracts visitors to California state beaches, particularly in Santa Cruz and Oceano. Moreno estimates that more than 80,000 people visit sites including Pismo State Beach’s monarch grove per year.

California lawmakers have passed laws to protect the species.

A decade ago, the state directed the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to conserve the butterflies and their habitats and in 2018 the state established the Monarch and Pollinator Rescue Program.

But advocates are pushing for monarch butterflies to be listed as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, which would provide further protections and perhaps help restore the population to how it was decades ago, when Widera first began counting the butterflies.

“It was like walking into a cathedral,” Widera said. “As it would warm up, (the butterflies) would burst out of their clusters and go out to feed. It would just be amazing — thousands of them flying all around you. It’s hard to explain the feeling.”