By Ethan Cohen | CNN

The first presidential debate is set for mid-September 2024, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday, setting up the earliest ever start to the presidential debate schedule.

The bipartisan commission, which has sponsored every general election presidential debate since its founding in 1987, will host three next year, with the first on September 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

The second debate will be on October 1 at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, and the third will be on October 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

There will also be one vice presidential debate on September 25 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Typically, the first debate has been in late September or early October. In 2020, the first debate was on September 29, but amid an uptick in pandemic-era early voting, the Trump campaign called for an additional early September debate.

The schedule tweak also means that the debates will end earlier than they ever have. There will be 27 days between the last debate and Election Day on November 5. That’s compared to 12 days in 2020 and 20 days in 2016.

However, it’s not certain the debates will actually happen.

Last year, the Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from its participation in the commission, with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying at the time that commission is “biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms.”

The scheduling change could make it more likely that the eventual Republican nominee participates in the debates, as the lack of a debate before voting started was one of McDaniel’s specific criticisms.

In 2020, the second scheduled presidential debate was canceled after then-President Donald Trump refused to take part in the event when the commission proposed doing it virtually because of coronavirus concerns. Instead, Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden participated in dueling town halls.

While the University of Utah hosted the 2020 vice presidential debate, the other three schools will host debates for the first time, with the commission’s co-chairs noting that Virginia State University will be the first historically Black college or university to host a general election debate.

All of the debates will start at 6 p.m. and will run for 90 minutes without commercial breaks, according to the commission’s statement, but details about format and moderators will be announced next year.

To receive an invitation to the debate, candidates need to be constitutionally eligible to serve as president, to be on the ballot on enough states to win a majority of the electoral votes, and to register at least 15% in polls from organizations selected by the commission.

By Christina A. Cassidy and Ayanna Alexander | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act, a decision voting rights advocates say could further erode protections under the landmark 1965 law.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis found that only the U.S. attorney general can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

The majority said other federal laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, make it clear when private groups can sue but said similar wording is not found in the voting law.

“When those details are missing, it is not our place to fill in the gaps, except when ‘text and structure’ require it,” U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras wrote for the majority in an opinion joined by Judge Raymond W. Gruender. Stras was nominated by former President Donald Trump and Gruender by former President George W. Bush.

The decision affirmed a lower judge’s decision to dismiss a case brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel after giving U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland five days to join the lawsuit.

Chief Judge Lavenski R. Smith noted in a dissenting opinion that federal courts across the country and the U.S. Supreme Court have considered numerous cases brought by private plaintiffs under Section 2. Smith said the court should follow “existing precedent that permits a judicial remedy” unless the Supreme Court or Congress decides differently.

“Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection,” wrote Smith, another appointee of George W. Bush.

Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, called the ruling a “travesty for democracy.” She had argued the appeal on behalf of the two Arkansas groups.

“By failing to reverse the district court’s radical decision, the Eighth Circuit has put the Voting Rights Act in jeopardy, tossing aside critical protections that voters fought and died for,” Lakin said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether the groups would appeal. A statement from the ACLU said the groups are exploring their options.

Barry Jefferson, political action chair of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP, called the ruling “a devastating blow to the civil rights of every American, and the integrity of our nation’s electoral system.”

The state NAACP chapter and the public policy group had challenged new Arkansas state House districts as diluting the influence of Black voters. The state’s redistricting plan created 11 majority-Black districts, which the groups argued was too few. They said the state could have drawn 16 majority-Black districts to more closely mirror the state’s demographics.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky noted there was “a strong merits case that at least some of the challenged districts” in the lawsuit violate the federal Voting Rights Act but said he could not rule after concluding a challenge could only be brought by the U.S. attorney general.

The Justice Department did file a “statement of interest” in the case saying private parties can file lawsuits to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Monday’s ruling applies only to federal courts covered by the 8th Circuit, which includes Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Meanwhile, several pending lawsuits by private groups challenge various political maps drawn by legislators across the country.

A representative for the Justice Department declined to comment.

It’s likely the case eventually will make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the issue was raised in a 2021 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“I join the court’s opinion in full, but flag one thing it does not decide,” Gorsuch wrote at the time, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. “Our cases have assumed — without deciding — that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under section 2.”

Gorsuch wrote that there was no need in that case for the justices to consider who may sue. But Gorsuch and Thomas were among the dissenters in June when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in another Voting Rights Act case in favor of Black voters in Alabama who objected to the state’s congressional districts.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, who was a defendant in the case, issued a statement praising Monday’s ruling.

“For far too long, courts across the country have allowed political activists to file meritless lawsuits seeking to seize control of how states conduct elections and redistricting,” he said. “This decision confirms that enforcement of the Voting Rights Act should be handled by politically accountable officials and not by outside special interest groups.”

Election law experts say most challenges seeking to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are brought by private plaintiffs and that the Justice Department has limited resources to pursue such cases. Some voting rights experts also noted the apparent contradiction in the Alabama case decided by the Supreme Court last June and Monday’s ruling by the appellate court.

“It doesn’t seem to make sense,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “If the laws were that private parties couldn’t bring these cases, then the Alabama case would have never even gotten off the ground.”

Lawsuits under Section 2 have long been used to try to ensure that Black voters have adequate political representation in places with a long history of racism, including many Southern states. Racial gerrymandering has been used in drawing legislative and congressional districts to pack Black voters into a small number of districts or spread them out so their votes are diluted. If only the U.S. attorney general is able to file such cases, it could sharply limit their number and make challenges largely dependent on partisan politics.

It’s unlikely Congress will be willing to act. Republicans have blocked recent efforts to restore protections in the Voting Rights Act that were tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago. In the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, justices dismantled an enforcement mechanism known as preclearance, which allowed for federal review of proposed election-related changes before they could take effect in certain states and communities with a history of discrimination.

In a statement, the Congressional Black Caucus noted that private individuals and civil rights groups have been successful in giving Black voters better representation through recent challenges to congressional maps drawn by Republican lawmakers in Alabama, Louisiana and Florida.

“This decision by the appellate court is ill-advised, cannot stand, and should be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which we hope will reaffirm that citizens have a private right of action to bring forward lawsuits under Section 2,” the group said.

Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

By Bill Barrow | Associated Press

PLAINS, Ga. — Linda Campbell decorated the Lions Club Christmas tree in her small hometown just as she would any other Thanksgiving week, but this was no ordinary Monday in late November.

All around the town of Plains, neighbors mourned the death of their matriarch, former U.S. first lady Rosalynn Carter, while worrying about their patriarch, former President Jimmy Carter.

“We’ve prayed for them every day for a long time,” said Campbell, 75, as another lifelong Plains resident, Lee Johnson, lowered the U.S. and Georgia state flags that fly in front of the downtown commercial district.

Rosalynn Carter died at home Sunday after her physical health declined rapidly as she lived with dementia in recent months. She was 96. The former president, who is 99, has been in home hospice care since February.

It was not immediately clear Monday whether Jimmy Carter will be able to attend the public services for his wife next week in Sumter County and Atlanta.

For months, townspeople anticipated losing him first. Now, with Rosalynn’s death, they and the extended Carter family are embracing the opportunity to celebrate a woman who was so often defined by her husband but who carved her own path locally and globally.

“She was an incredibly humble person — the epitome of grace,” said Tim Buchanan, a cousin of Rosalynn’s whose mother remained close to her throughout her life. “Her fingerprints are on things all over this community.”

Jill Stuckey, a close friend of the Carters since she moved to south Georgia in the 1990s, called the couple “the lifeblood of Plains,” a town of 600 or so. That’s about the same size as when the future president and first lady were born here in the 1920s, wed here in 1946 and ran his presidential campaign out of the old Plains train depot in 1976.

“It was awesome to see the two of them do all those things,” recalled Campbell, who grew up with the Carters’ eldest children. “It was exciting here, too. When they were in the White House, we had tour buses of people from all over the world coming to see where Mr. Jimmy and Ms. Rosalynn came from.”

Perhaps more surprising than a presidential couple emerging from such a small place is that they came back after Jimmy Carter’s 1980 defeat, returning to the same house they lived in when he was first elected to the state Senate in 1962.

“I was surprised a little bit as an 18-year-old wondering why,” said LeAnne Smith, Rosalynn’s niece, who still lives in the home where her aunt grew up. Smith figured they’d “at least go to Atlanta,” where they opened The Carter Center for their post-White House humanitarian work and advocacy for democracy.

“In the long run,” Smith said, “I think that coming back and living here was, you know, their sanctuary and their peace place and their place to rest and enjoy being home.”

Disappointed and even depressed over their early exit from Washington, the Carters dived back into local life. They joined Maranatha Baptist Church, where Rosalynn Carter’s final funeral will be held next Wednesday, Nov. 29, after having been members of Plains Baptist Church for most of their marriage.

Campbell, who attends church in nearby Americus, noted that Rosalynn was instrumental in establishing a community-wide Thanksgiving food distribution, led by the Maranatha congregation. The latest annual event was held the same weekend Rosalynn died.

On Sunday evening, hours after her death, many community members gathered at Plains Methodist Church, where Rosalynn grew up and where the Carter were married, for the Thanksgiving week service.

“We had more than 400 people get food,” Campbell said. “She would have been proud.”

Jeff Campbell, who helped his wife Linda decorate the downtown Christmas tree, recalled his years working for the National Parks Service that maintained the Carter historic sites and their residential property that will one day become part of the public exhibits.

“She was always very gracious,” he said, though he laughed about her exacting standards for how the properties appeared.

“We sometimes would have a new guy who thought he knew better than Ms. Rosalynn,” Campbell said, noting that Rosalynn was an accomplished gardener herself. “I’d tell him, ‘You do this the way Ms. Rosalynn wants it and everything will be fine.’”

Stuckey said Rosalynn always balanced life as a global figure, traveling to dozens of countries as part The Carter Center’s work, with being an eager participant in small-town life.

“I’d hear somebody coming in and it would be President and Mrs. Carter out for a walk,” Stuckey recalled. “Mrs. Carter sometimes would come by herself and, you know, just want to know what’s going on in the town. They’d have been away for a while and wanted to catch up on how everybody is doing.”

As deep as the Carters’ family and community ties go in Sumter County, Rosalynn did not distinguish between lifelong residents and those who came to Plains later.

Phillip Kurland has been in Plains about 30 years — less than a third of Rosalynn Carter’s life span. He and his wife opened a political memorabilia shop downtown.

“They’d both come in” while on their regular walks or bike rides, he said. The former president would always greet customers, “but she would want to stay and have real conversations with everybody.”

Andrea Walker, another Plains transplant, befriended the Carters when she and her late husband built a house that bordered on “the Carter compound,” as the locals call it.

Rosalynn found ways around the entrapment of six-foot fencing and Secret Service protection, slipping out at times without the agents knowing, Walker recalled. “She would jump in her golf cart, come over, kind of do the knock and walk-in,” she said. Other times, agents would give the neighbors a heads up.

“We’d start pouring her margarita; we knew that’s what she wanted,” Walker said. “She was just coming out of the pool right to her frozen rocks.”

It’s obvious in Plains that “everything is named after Jimmy,” but Buchanan said “we’re making progress” on establishing more of an official presence for Rosalynn. Along with markers outside outside her childhood garden and the old Smith home where LeAnne Smith still lives, a “Butterfly Trail” includes small gardens around the town, a nod to the former first lady’s love of butterflies.

Because the former first lady – and eventually the former president – will be buried in Plains, there will always be a draw for outsiders who help support the town Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter made famous, townspeople said.

Said Stuckey: “They were thinking about economic development of Plains and tourism even in their deaths.”

Cooking-related fires are one of the most common situations fire departments respond to during the holiday season.

Some habits are harder to quit than others. That’s particularly true for body-focused repetitive behaviors, also called BFRBs. But most of us know them as nail biting, skin picking and even hair pulling.

Food wrappers. Plastic bottle caps. Cigarette butts – 231,735 cigarette butts, to be precise. These are just a few of the more than 1 million items collected by over 37,000 volunteers along the shores of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary between 2017 and 2021, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association report released in October.

The report from NOAA’s Marine Debris Program combined five citizen science datasets to analyze the trash collected in cleanups throughout the marine sanctuary over four years. Organizations that run local cleanups, such as Save Our Shores, the Surfrider Foundation and Downtown Streets Team, supplied the data.

Marine debris washes up on beaches from the ocean, is left by beachgoers or migrates downstream when it rains. Some debris makes its way to Monterey Bay from distant locations through tides and ocean upwelling.

All marine debris can potentially harm ocean life, causing intestinal blockages, malnutrition and even poisonings when consumed. Fishing gear in particular can pose a threat to marine life that becomes entangled in stray nets or fishing lines. In July, an employee from the Santa Cruz Wharf alerted the Long Marine Lab’s Marine Mammal Stranding Network to a dead California sea lion on Cowell Beach, which died when a fishing line wrapped around its neck and prevented it from eating.

Plastics of various kinds made up 73% of the debris, and included food containers, bags, bottles, food wrappers and many other miscellaneous items. Plastic breaks apart, but doesn’t break down – the pieces just get smaller and smaller. Much of the plastic collected was in small pieces, and could not be attributed to any specific waste category.

Beaches in urban areas such as Santa Cruz tended to have the highest amount of debris collected, but also the highest number of cleanups. Some parts of the coastline, especially in Big Sur, were completely inaccessible to beach cleanup participants.

“Cleanups are still needed, and we would love for that to not be the case,” said Erica Donnelly-Greenan, the executive director of Save our Shores, an organization that has been running beach cleanups in the Santa Cruz area since the early 1980s.

Donnelly-Greenan noted that while beach cleanups do not address the source of the problem, they do make people aware of the problem. And perhaps just as importantly, they provide valuable data for large-scale reports.

Cigarette butts made up 23% of the debris, despite only 10% of Californians identifying as cigarette smokers. Cigarette butts contain harmful pollutants such as arsenic and lead, which can be ingested by marine birds and mammals.

“There’s just this misconception that (cigarette butts) are only a little bit of tobacco and some paper, so there’s this thought that they’re actually biodegradable and not that harmful,” said Donnelly-Green. The number of cigarette butts collected did decrease after 2019, when California State Parks banned smoking on state beaches.

While cigarette butt pollution decreased, e-cigarette waste and dog waste bags increased over the past two years of the study. Face mask pollution showed a steady increase over the entire study period, most likely because of their use during the coronavirus pandemic.

This report is the first of its kind in the region and was only possible because of the contributions of citizen scientists.

“Citizen science data has gotten much richer and there’s a lot more data than there was in the past,” said Pam Krone, one of the authors of the NOAA report. “So our doing this report was really enabled by the citizen science data being more complete, and having so much of it available to analyze.”

Human actions can reduce marine debris both upstream and on the beach. While proper trash disposal at the beach is essential, so are legislative solutions that reduce the amount of plastic that makes it to the beach. In 2022, California’s SB 54 mandated that all packaging sold within California must be recyclable or compostable after 2032, and required major reductions in plastic production and recycling in the state leading up to that deadline.

“There’s just so many different segments of society and each has a role to contribute to minimizing marine debris,” said Krone.

A Los Angeles judge found Monday that there is enough evidence for A$AP Rocky to stand trial for allegations that he fired a gun at a former friend and collaborator outside a Hollywood hotel in 2021.

Small Business Saturday returns to the Peninsula this weekend at locally owned shops, which will be offering special discounts.

The Old Monterey Business Association encourages residents and visitors to spend Saturday exploring and shopping in downtown Monterey, where businesses will be offering sales, limited offers and activities to support local stores.

“Why fight the crowds at the mall and the big box stores when you can enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of Downtown Old Monterey with its many gift shops, boutiques and restaurants?” a press release from the Old Monterey Business Association said. “Your gifts warm the hearts of loved ones near and far and those purchases help our community remain vibrant.”

Introduced by American Express in 2010, Small Business Saturday is a national campaign that redirects consumers to local stores during the busy holiday season.

“This year, we know that small businesses need our support now more than ever as they navigate, retool and pivot from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic,” said the U.S. Small Business Administration, which has co-sponsored the campaign since 2011.

According to the 2022 Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey – commissioned by American Express – consumers spent an estimated $17.9 billion at independent retailers and restaurants during last year’s Small Business Saturday.

Interested patrons can visit oldmonterey.org for a list of participating stores and offers.

Choose Your Treasure second-hand store will celebrate its fifth anniversary in business with a 50% discount off everything in store throughout the month of November.

Manasiri’s Crepes and Sandwiches will serve free Turkish coffee all day Saturday, while Webster Street Gallery will have art and live music from 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Comanche Cellars is offering Secret Santa Six Packs of wine for $100 and Albatross Ridge Winery and Kitchen is offering 15% off all bottle purchases on Small Business Saturday. The Albatross Ridge winery will also have live music, wine, craft beer and tapas Saturday night from 7-9 p.m.

The first-ever Artisan Holiday Craft Sale at Slowfiber will also kick off Saturday to support local makers and run through Dec. 23.

There was a time when Travis Kelce wasn’t interested in talking about his personal life, but no more.

More than three years after a wildfire devastated Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the massive redwood trees in California’s oldest state park continue to recover with surprising speed.

But some wildlife species, particularly salmon and steelhead trout in the park’s streams, and some types of birds, are still struggling and could take many years to bounce back.

That was the conclusion of researchers who spoke at a recent scientific symposium exploring how Big Basin is faring in the wake of the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire.

The best news: The park’s famed old-growth redwoods, some of which tower more than 250 feet and date back more than 1,500 years, are nearly all green again, showing significant amounts of new growth after the wildfire’s flames charred their bark black and for a while gave them a doomed appearance.

“Coast redwoods are just supremely fire adapted, and were well-prepared for this fire event, and they seem to be recovering, at least so far,” said biologist Drew Peltier, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who has studied Big Basin’s post-fire recovery.

At the symposium, hosted Nov. 15 by the nonprofit Santa Cruz Mountains Bioregional Council, Peltier explained how eight months after the fire, he and other researchers from Northern Arizona University set up a camera high in a redwood tree about 1 mile from park headquarters to automatically take photos every day.

The first photo he showed, from April 2021, revealed a forest dominated by brown, burned redwoods. The next photo, taken this past June, showed the same forest covered in green, the trees regrown thick in only two years.

“What we saw was pretty remarkable. All these trees are brown, they have no green foliage,” Peltier said of the first photo. “And two years later, they are fully leafed out. I pulled the image from today and I almost didn’t recognize it. The trees are so bushy now.”

The fire started with lightning strikes on Aug. 16, 2020. It burned 86,509 acres, an area nearly three times the size of the city of San Francisco, in rural Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. Flames from the most destructive fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains in recorded history destroyed 1,490 structures, mostly around the town of Boulder Creek. One man was killed.

The fire burned 97% of Big Basin’s 18,000 acres. It destroyed campgrounds — many of which were facilities loved by generations of families, including the 1 million people a year who visited.

“Ecologically the park is doing just fine,” said Jon Keeley, a senior scientist at the US Geological Survey and biology professor at UCLA who participated in the symposium, in an interview afterward. “The forest is coming back the way it is adapted to. About 90% of the redwood trees are resprouting.”

Keeley said Big Basin’s forests are recovering faster than the buildings and other visitor amenities.

State parks officials have reopened the park, but in a limited way. Visitors are recommended to make day-use reservations because parking is limited. There is no camping. But 4 miles of trails and 18 miles of fire roads have reopened for hiking and mountain biking. Earlier this month, a welcome center at Rancho Del Oso, on the park’s southern edge near Highway 1 and the Pacific Ocean, also reopened.

State parks parks officials have held public meetings and focus groups to draw up plans to rebuild. Their vision includes moving some of the buildings, camping and parking away from the most sensitive old-growth redwoods in the former headquarters area, and putting them in other parts of the park, including at Little Basin, a property on the park’s eastern flank. A shuttle bus system also is being designed for visitors in busy times, reducing traffic.

Will Fourt, a senior state parks planner, told the symposium that a more detailed “facilities management plan” with specifics about new campgrounds, utilities, parking and buildings is now being drawn up by state parks officials and will be released to the public next year. Construction is still several years away, he said, adding that the goal is to rebuild about the same number of campsites as were there before the fire.

“The vision includes rebuilding some things differently than they were in the past,” Fourt said, “while honoring the history of the park and striving to create future trails and camping experiences in the park that were most important to visitors.”

One part of the park that is still struggling is its streams and fish.

Jerry Smith, a professor emeritus at San Jose State University who has studied the parks’ fish for 30 years, said that parts of Waddell Creek were filled with sediment when big storms this winter and the winter before sent mud, rocks and other debris washing down from bare slopes along the park’s western edges. Some dead trees, including Douglas firs, created logjams in the creek and its tributaries.

The changes have likely blocked the passage of endangered steelhead trout and coho salmon, and filled in many of the pools that the fish rely on. In one area of Waddell Creek, he said, “you’ve got a log jam as big as a football field.”

As a result, coho and steelhead have been almost nonexistent in Waddell Creek over the past two years, he said. After similar disruption following huge storms in the winter of 1982-83, it took the fish 15 to 20 years to recover, he said.

Until more vegetation grows on the steep western slopes of the park, another wet winter this year will continue the destructive trend.

“Waddell got really hammered and is going to continue to get hammered,” Smith said.

The park’s bird species have seen a mixed recovery. Biologist Alex Rinkert told the symposium that his surveys have found three years later some species, including woodpeckers, robins, juncos and warblers, are back in healthy numbers, while others such as jays and chickadees have declined, due to the change in habitat and possibly food sources after the fire.

A few species, like the endangered marbled murrelet, which lives in the Douglas fir trees that were killed in large numbers, have declined significantly “and may take decades to recover,” Rinkert said.

PACIFIC GROVE — Monarch butterfly numbers are down this year entering prime counting season, but experts aren’t panicking yet.

“Butterfly populations are bouncy,” said Isis Howard, an endangered species conservation biologist at the Xerces Society. “The monarch butterfly life cycle is unique in that they have multiple generations present at one time. The super generation’s success is reliant on the previous generation’s success.”

And with last year’s winter storms, she says it likely impacted the breeding population of monarchs, hence the lower numbers. Animals can behave differently year after year, meaning there may be more on the way. “It’s a little early to tell. There might always be a late wave of monarchs.”

The western monarch butterfly is the species that earned Pacific Grove the name of Butterfly Town, U.S.A. Unlike the eastern monarch butterfly, they migrate between northern states like Washington, Oregon, and Idaho before coming to roost in temperate California for the winter. At temperatures below 55 degrees, monarch butterflies cannot fly. Instead, they huddle together in orange and black clusters in the trees until the air warms again. This unusual behavior makes it possible to count them early on cold winter mornings, when they’re still gathered together.

The annual Thanksgiving count is vital for those who want to ensure the preservation of these butterflies, which are set to be listed as “endangered” by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. “By comparing how that number differs throughout the years, we’re able to get a very good idea of how the population is faring over time,” said Natalie Johnston, community science coordinator at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. “And then we can start working on what factors contribute to this and what needs to be done in order to have that future population.”

But across the monarch butterfly sanctuaries in Pismo, Natural Bridges and Pacific Grove, the volunteers have noted far fewer butterflies overall. The monarch butterfly count on the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, which is updated weekly, currently lists the count at 7,604. Johnston reported that’s far less than the 12,600 butterflies that they counted last year around this same time. Major concerns about how low the numbers had dropped in 2020 were starting to be alleviated when the numbers climbed last year – but this might just be a low year.

The Xerces Society, a conservation group focused on invertebrates, also conducts another butterfly count in January to obtain further data on how monarchs are doing. Earlier this year, they reported a 58% average decrease of monarchs — according to the Xerces Society’s conversations with local volunteers, it was likely due to the rain and wind causing trees to topple, with monarchs still roosting in them. But in Pacific Grove, Johnston noted the populations had far more success. There was only a 17% decrease, which is an average and expected decrease in the area. Johnston speculates that the variety of trees in the area may have had something to do with it. “We have eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress… it may have something to do with the variety of trees to provide more robust habitats for the monarchs.”

That’s not to say monarchs shouldn’t be a focus of our attention. Their populations have declined by approximately 95% since the 1980s. Howard and Johnston both said people can advocate for these butterflies by educating themselves on local action. For areas further inland, like Carmel Valley, Johnston recommends planting native milkweed species and other plants that monarchs can eat during their breeding and overwintering seasons — which means they need to be pesticide-free to be safe for butterfly consumption. In other areas, ensuring that there are habitats for monarchs in the form of native trees can also help. Check with your local experts to find what specific actions you can take.

And while you might not want to be one of the 12 volunteers in Monterey County who gets up in the wee hours of the chilly morning to count butterflies, you can still learn about them at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. On Saturday, their Science Saturday event is all about monarchs. They’ve even got a monarch butterfly-themed cover band called The 5 M’s, made up of interpreters from the Natural Bridges site.

“I love the fact that Pacific Grove calls itself Butterfly Town U.S.A.,” Johnston said, “and I would love to see more butterfly and nature stewardship, and for that to be an identity — not just at Pacific Grove, but for all the residents of the Monterey County area.”