Jacqui Verloren - Interpretive Naturalist & Conservation Artist

Why We Don’t Accept Money from Pesticide or Oil Companies Executive director Scott Black shares why Xerces Society doesn't accept funding from companies whose products are harming invertebrates.

With 12,260 overwintering butterflies, 2025 is the third lowest year on record.

Hundreds of volunteers and partners surveyed monarchs at 249 sites across California’s coast, as part of this year’s . The numbers are clear: western monarchs are in serious trouble, and desperately need our help right now.

The three lowest counts in the program’s history have all occurred in recent years: 1,901 individual monarchs in 2020, 9,119 in 2024, and 12,260 in 2025. For comparison, western monarchs regularly numbered in the low millions in the 1980s.

So, how do we turn things around?
🌲 Protect overwintering sites! In the last year, at least 3 active sites were damaged by construction. But communities have also rallied together to stop construction projects, or find solutions that keep monarchs safe alongside the new buildings.

🚫 Avoid pesticides as much as possible! They do way more than just hurt “pests”; insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides can all harm and kill monarchs and other wildlife.

🌻 Create and maintain habitat with native milkweeds and other flowers! Once monarchs leave their overwintering sites, they need native flowers for food, and milkweed to lay eggs on.

🐛 And avoid breeding monarchs in captivity to release. We very much understand why it feels like a good idea: more monarchs can’t be bad, right? One or two for education is totally fine (if your local laws allow it; California does not). But releasing lots of captive-bred butterflies is not actually solving any of the problems they’ll face in the wild. It’s just putting even more animals into a bad situation, where there already isn’t enough food and habitat, and exposing wild monarchs to more diseases.

Monarchs need us to work together and bring them back from the brink. Learn more and get started at https://xerces.org/press/western-monarch-numbers-remain-at-historic-low 🦋

Global shark and ray populations have declined sharply. A Review in Nature Reviews Biodiversity assesses global status, highlights drivers of decline, and outlines the regulatory, market-based and conservation actions needed to reduce mortality and reverse shark and ray biodiversity loss.

Link to the Review in the comments.

What do seals and bananas have in common? Relaxed seals often strike this “banana pose” while they are resting on the beach. Seals are very well-insulated by a thick layer of blubber, except for their head and rear flippers. By lifting them up, these areas stay nice and dry, thus helping seals to regulate their body temperature. This yoga-like position is also a great sign of the seal’s health and well-being, so much so that researchers often refer to this as the “happy seal position”!

How does conservation make a difference?

Northern elephant seals historically lived along the west coast of North America. In the late 1800s, they were hunted to near extinction - and at one point presumed to be extinct. Luckily, a small population persisted on Guadalupe Island, Mexico, from which all of today’s northern elephant seals are descended.

In the early 1900s, northern elephant seals began recolonizing additional islands and later mainland areas along the west coast of North America, thanks to conservation efforts from the Mexican government. They are a conservation success story!

Adult elephant seals return to the same beach every year, but young juvenile seals are exploratory and are the main age group that find new breeding habitat. Young animals played a vital role in bringing the northern elephant seal population to greater than 250,000 animals today!

📍 Quiroste Tribal Land

Image description: A group of elephant seals sleep on the beach. Three seals vocalize in the foreground.
Credit: Kathleen Curtis

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Long before January had a name, winter carried a sound that belonged only to the deep cold—the chorus of wolves moving across the night.

Many Native American peoples, and later the colonists who lived beside these winter lands, noticed how the wolves’ voices grew strongest when the year was at its emptiest. Food was scarce, snow lay deep, and the nights stretched wide and unbroken. And so this moon—January’s full moon—came to be known as the Wolf Moon, a name born from the simple truth of those winter evenings: wolves calling out to one another through the dark.

But beneath the practical naming, something quieter moved.

The Wolf Moon rises just after the winter solstice, when daylight has only just begun its slow return. Its light feels ancient, thin and bright like a blade, illuminating the stillness that winter protects. This is the moon of early beginnings—a beginning that does not rush, a beginning that gathers strength in the dark before stepping forward.

In old winter lore, people watched this moon to understand their own endurance. Wolves survive the leanest stretch of the year through connection: traveling together, protecting their young, sharing warmth. Their howls are not cries of hunger alone but a way of staying linked across vast distances of snow and silence.

So the Wolf Moon became a symbol of community, intuition, and the inner fire that refuses to go out—even when the landscape sleeps.

On a clear night, if you stand beneath this moon, its light seems to sharpen whatever is quietly stirring inside you. Not a wish, not yet a plan—just the awareness of something beginning to wake. The Wolf Moon doesn’t rush you; it steadies you. It reminds you that strength can be soft, that guidance can come from instinct, and that you don’t have to walk the long winter alone.

As the Wolf Moon climbs, the night listens.

And something in you rises to meet its light.

Resolutions can be amazing opportunities to set new intentions and make new habits in the new year. Consider making a new habit of protecting animals in small and large ways.

Here are some of our 2026 Resolutions for Wildlife! 📝

Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world first Planet’s oldest bee species and primary pollinators were under threat from deforestation and competition from ‘killer bees’

NOAA just published a new abundance estimate for northern elephant seals in California as of 2023. The current estimate is 194,903 individuals. (note: there are also northern elephant seals to the north and south of California, so this is not a species-wide population estimate).

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Año Nuevo State Park