This year has certainly been the worst for the monarch butterfly. Population of monarch butterfly has been contracted to less than one hectare in Mexico. Remote forest of the Mexican mountains is the area the monarchs prefer to spend winters. Since 1994, researchers have been trying to figure out how much land is occupied by them every year.

The numbers often go up and down, but this time the decline has been too much. In a period between 1994 and 2004, the butterflies occupied between five and 20 hectare most of time. But since then, the decline in population of the monarch butterflies has been too much. Last year was a disaster for the orange insects as recorded at 1.19 hectares.

The news shocked Jeremy Kerr, a butterfly specialist and biologist at the University of Ottawa. He referred the figure as worst. "The problem is that it's hard to escape once you're in this kind of vortex. They've been hit by a bunch of different things in a bunch of different places, and they're all bad", he added.

One of the main hazards is farm pesticides, which comes in their main flyway through the United States and into Canada. The second is herbicide-resistant crops used by the farmers to kill weeds, including milkweed, the food monarchs like to feed on.

Many monarchs have been forced to migrate too far north because of the abnormal hot spring of 2012. He said that it is highly unlikely that any of those survived to return south.

A summit was held in Mexico last year by the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico to vow to establish a conservation group for the monarch. The summit was held after they were asked by scientists, environmentalists, writers and artists to build a north-south corridor of milkweed and seek rise in population of the monarchs.