If you were out for a drive in the late summer of ‘71 (as we were) and your path took you to Cape May (as ours did), you might have been lucky enough to see clouds of monarch butterflies as they massed for their annual migration. But they weren’t just in the air: They were stacked two or three high on flowers and bushes and covered branches so thickly it looked as if the trees were made of butterflies. If the weather is cool enough, they gather in large dense groups known as roosts.

If you make the trip to Cape May now, you’ll see plenty of monarchs, but in nowhere near the numbers observed in the past. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the population of Eastern Monarchs (the ones that use Cape May as a launchpad for their annual trip to Mexico) has declined by 80%.

What’s killing the monarchs? The answers are both familiar and banal: loss of forest habitat to agriculture and urban development; pesticides are killing both insects and milkweed, the host plant that monarch butterfly caterpillars feed on; extreme temperature; severe weather; and wildfires — to name just a few problems.

Thus far, the monarch hasn’t been listed as an endangered species. Actually, it was — for one year. It seems to have been victim of some bureaucratic doubletalk that got it delisted.

The Center for Biological Diversity is running a Save the Monarchs campaign. It’s a good place to start.

Yesterday, folks who observed the full solar eclipse spoke on the radio about the spiritual aspect of what they witnessed. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t seem to extend to  monarch butterflies, who share this battered  piece of rock with all of us.