Monarch Butterfly Conservation Through the Social Lens: Eliciting Public Preferences for Management Strategies Across Transboundary Nations

Solis-Sosa, Rodrigo; Semeniuk, Christina A.D.; Fernández-Lozada, Sergio; Dabrowska, Kornelia; Cox, Sean P.; Haider, Wolfgang

doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00316

Cited by 7 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 92 publications

(107 reference statements)

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“…Finally, the Monarch butterfly is a complex social-ecological system in which actions and perceptions from different stakeholders may play a determinant role in conservation strategies' support and success. Research is undergoing to couple the MOBU-SDyM and the lessons we learned here with previous social research (Solis-Sosa et al, 2019) to give policymakers the necessary tools to conserve the Monarch Butterly's eastern migratory phenomenon for generations to come.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Landscape-Level Assessment of Restoration Resource Allocation for the Eastern Monarch Butterfly

Solis-Sosa

Mooers

Larrivée

et al. 2021

Front. Environ. Sci.

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The Monarch butterfly eastern population (Danaus plexippus) is in decline primarily due to habitat loss. Current habitat restoration programs focus on re-establishing milkweed, the primary food resource for Monarch caterpillars, in the central United States of America. However, individual components of the Monarch life cycle function as part of an integrated whole. Here we develop the MOBU-SDyM, a migration-wide systems dynamics model of the Monarch butterfly migratory cycle to explore alternative management strategies’ impacts. Our model offers several advances over previous efforts, considering complex variables such as dynamic temperature-dependent developmental times, dynamic habitat availability, and weather-related mortality across the entire range. We first explored whether the predominant focus of milkweed restoration in the mid-range of the Monarch’s migration could be overestimating the Monarch’s actual habitat requirements. Second, we examined the robustness of using the recommended 1.2–1.6 billion milkweed stems as a policy objective when accounting for factors such as droughts, changes in temperature, and the stems’ effective usability by the Monarchs. Third, we used the model to estimate the number and distribution of stems across the northern, central, and southern regions of the breeding range needed to reach a self-sustainable long-term Monarch population of six overwintering hectares. Our analysis revealed that concentrating milkweed growth in the central region increases the size of the overwintering colonies more so than equivalent growth in the south region, with growth in the northern region having a negligible effect. However, even though simulating an increase in milkweed stems in the south did not play a key role in increasing the size of the overwintering colonies, it plays a paramount role in keeping the population above a critically small size. Abiotic factors considerably influenced the actual number of stems needed, but, in general, our estimates of required stems were 43–91% larger than the number of stems currently set as a restoration target: our optimal allocation efforts were 7.35, 92, and 0.15% to the south, central, and northern regions, respectively. Systems dynamics’ analytical and computational strengths provided us with new avenues to investigate the Monarch’s migration as a complex biological system and to contribute to more robust restoration policies for this unique species.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Landscape-Level Assessment of Restoration Resource Allocation for the Eastern Monarch Butterfly

Solis-Sosa

Mooers

Larrivée

et al. 2021

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…A recent analysis (Solis-Sosa et al, 2019), which we use in this paper, identified that, in general, urban residents across North America are more willing to pay for a given conservation strategy if it is led by an international NGO that distributes its restoration activities across the entire Monarch range and provides donors with a probability of reaching the conservation target, hereafter, program success. Also, donors were more willing to pay for a strategy when the overwintering monarch colonies area was small.…”

Section: Social Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We modelled the social domain as the proportion of potential donors supporting a milkweed restoration strategy under a specific conservation context defined by the simulated overwintering colonies' current overwintering area and trend. We used behaviour models obtained from the discrete choice experiment (DCE) by Solis-Sosa et al (2019), in which they explored how respondents' utility changed based on a series of strategic-level attributes of a Monarch's conservation strategy. The utility is defined as the weight of outcomes in making a decision (Ariely et al, 2003), or the level of short-term happiness derived from a specific material or immaterial good (Kimball & Willis, 2006).…”

Section: Social Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where S indicates all the scenarios compared, x denotes the vector of attributes within the behaviour model, and b represents the vector of utility estimates associated with each attribute (Solis-Sosa et al, 2019).…”

Section: Social-ecological Interphase (Model Coupling)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our goal in this paper is to test for such mismatches and, given that we find them, improve the NGO's target donation's accuracy by using a DNNS coupled social-ecological model. As a case study, we modelled the DNNS of the eastern population of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) by combining Monarch-related social dynamics (Solis-Sosa et al, 2019) with migration-wide ecological dynamics (Solis-Sosa et al, 2021). This charismatic long-distant migrant butterfly has dwindled in numbers across North America mainly due to the rapid and extensive expansion of GMO agriculture (Brower et al, 2006;Pleasants & Oberhauser, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investing in monarch conservation: understanding private funding dynamics

Solis-Sosa¹,

Semeniuk²,

Larrivée³

et al. 2022

Front. Conserv. Sci.

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Non-profit environmental organizations (NGOs) rely heavily on external donors to fulfill their mandates. However, forecasting donations for long-term planning is an elusive task at best. The non-compulsory nature of donation requires NGOs to understand how donors’ attention and funding allocations change over time as conservation scenarios change and incorporate these insights into their budgeting plans. We hypothesize that an NGO can hinder its capacity to reach its conservation goals by neglecting its donor-NGO-natural system (DNNS), which is reactive to the socio-ecological context. To test our hypothesis, we compared the ecological outcomes derived from a budgeting strategy assuming donors have a fixed willingness to pay throughout the program (open-loop) against the reality that donor preferences change over time (closed-loop) based on the evolving ecological context, partly driven by the program’s actions. Our analysis was performed using two different willingness to pay (WTP) behavioural models, one representing donors informed about the success of the program supported (GPI), and another without such information (GPI), evidencing how the underlying assumptions about the target donors can radically change the organization’s fundraising strategy. Next, we used our closed-loop approach to estimate NGO’s optimal yearly donation requests to achieve a conservation target. Finally, we tested the consequences of presuming an incorrect WTP behavioural model while estimating optimal yearly donation requests by applying the optimization results from the previous step into a model parameterized with a different behavioural model. Our model was created by coupling a discrete choice experiment (DCE) and a systems dynamics model, developing a coupled social-ecological model of the eastern Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), a charismatic long-distant migrant butterfly that has dwindled in numbers across North America mainly due to the increases in GMO agriculture. Our results showed a significant difference in donations received and ecological outcome forecasted by an open-loop model and the actual numbers obtained by the more real-life, closed-loop model, highlighting the importance of accounting for human behaviour during the planning phase of a long-term conservation strategy. Next, when we used our closed-loop to estimate optimal donation requests, the conservation objectives and funds raised were consistently and efficiently achieved, regardless of the underlying behavioural WTP model. We also designed novel visual tools from the behaviour WTP model exploration to bridge the gap between science insights obtained from DCEs and decision-making. However, when we used closed-loop optimal donation requests obtained from one WTP behaviour model into a simulation parameterized with different WTP behavioural models, considerable ecological and financial targets deviations arose. These deviations highlight the importance of acknowledging the dynamic nature of donor’s behaviour and the need to thoroughly characterize such behaviour. Finally, we introduce a novel forecasting tool that conservation managers will have at their disposal to improve the accuracy of their budget forecasting and, ultimately, increase the program’s success rate.

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Do farmers need to be paid to grow milkweed for monarchs or will they volunteer if it is easy enough?

Thakur

Hurley

2022

Applied Eco Perspectives Pol

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A decline in the monarch butterfly population led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to acknowledge monarchs should be listed under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. This research evaluates farmer interest in restoring monarch habitat on their non-cropped acres to help circumvent such a listing. Results suggest that efforts to promote habitat restoration on non-cropped acres should focus on voluntary participation and make programs as easy as possible through design and technical assistance. The results also suggest that even a successful program can only provide a small fraction of the habitat needed to meet current restoration goals.

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Monarch Butterfly Conservation Through the Social Lens: Eliciting Public Preferences for Management Strategies Across Transboundary Nations

Cited by 7 publications

References 92 publications

A Landscape-Level Assessment of Restoration Resource Allocation for the Eastern Monarch Butterfly

A Landscape-Level Assessment of Restoration Resource Allocation for the Eastern Monarch Butterfly

Investing in monarch conservation: understanding private funding dynamics

Do farmers need to be paid to grow milkweed for monarchs or will they volunteer if it is easy enough?

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