The warm coast of California is a place where many western monarch butterflies stay during the cold winter months in the United States. Researchers fear the record low number of monarchs this year could mean the insects are in danger of disappearing in the near future. Researchers from the Xerces Society said they found fewer than 2,000 orange-and-black butterflies in the yearly count this January. That number showed a big drop from the tens of thousands in recent years. In the 1980s, there were millions of them in trees from Northern California's Marin County to San Diego County near the Mexico border. Every winter, western monarch butterflies fly south from the northwestern U.S. to California, going to the same places and even the same trees. They often stay together to keep warm.