Monarch butterflies take over the Monterey Peninsula

MONTEREY, Calif. (KION-TV) Historically, Califonia is seeing tens of millions of monarch butterflies, but scientists feared they would go extinct after numbers dwindled last year.

According to Xerces Society, it's population declined more than 95% since the 1980's. Around 2,000 were spotted around the state last year, but around mid-December, around 14,000 monarch butterflies were counted at the sanctuary at Pacific Grove.

"We get here in the very early morning sometimes just as the sun is rising. because monarchs are cold blooded creatures. when the temperature is about 55 degrees or so," Natalie Johnston from Pacific Grove Museum of National History said. "They don't move their wings. so instead of moving their wings like we're seeing right now. Instead they'll just be clustered in the trees."

They don't know what's causing the reemergence, but they told KION they're looking into it. As of Jan. 22, there were nearly 8,000 butterflies counted and according to Xerces Society, they counted a quarter of a million monarchs across the West.