Monsanto donates $4 million to effort to save monarch butterflies

ST. LOUIS — Agribusiness Monsanto Co., whose popular weed killer Roundup has been partly blamed by critics for killing monarch butterfly habitat, said Tuesday it is committing $4 million to efforts to stem the worrisome decline of the insects.

The St. Louis company said that it is donating $3.6 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is giving another $1.3 million to the monarch fund. The remaining Monsanto money will be set aside to mirror what other federal agencies plan to offer in the next three years.

Monsanto also intends to contribute $400,000 to experts and groups working on behalf of the butterfly, which is being considered for federal protection because its numbers have plunged by more than 90 percent in the past two decades.

The decline of the monarchs, which are found throughout the continental U.S., worries environmentalists and scientists. Much of the decline is blamed on destruction of habitat that includes milkweed, a plant on which monarchs lay their eggs and that provides the sole source of food for their caterpillars.

Some monarch populations migrate thousands of miles from breeding and wintering grounds in California and Mexico. But along the route, there is less of the milkweed — widely attributed to increasing acreage for corn and soybeans, logging, construction and a drought that peaked in 2012.

Environmentalists say the butterfly’s decline has coincided with use of the rise of Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup and an increase of acreage planted in its herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready crops.

“Monsanto is committed to preserving and protecting the biodiversity of our planet,” Monsanto President and Chief Operating Officer Brett Begemann said. “While weed management has been a factor in the decline of milkweed habitat, the agricultural sector can absolutely be part of the solution in restoring it.”

Monsanto said its grants will go to monarch-related initiatives that include the nonprofit Monarch Watch conservation-and-research program at the University of Kansas, the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, Pheasants Forever, the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Energy Resources Center and the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.