Jeanine Standard has a “monarch-mobile” — a little off-road utility vehicle covered with images of the monarch butterfly.
She has three meadows planted with monarch-friendly wildflowers.
She has buses of schoolchildren who come to her in the fall to learn about the beloved and imperiled butterfly.
She even has a title of sorts: Local kids call her the monarch lady.
What Standard, a psychologist and monarch advocate in rural Canton, still doesn’t have — about six years after putting down a $10 deposit — is an official Illinois monarch license plate.
But that’s about to change, according to the Illinois secretary of state’s office, which has announced that new plates with eye-catching monarch decals will finally be available to the 2,500 people who have signed up, as well as anyone else who chooses to apply and pay $54.
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“I’m so excited,” said Standard, 67, who sees the news as another hopeful sign for a cause that more Illinoisans have embraced in recent years.
This region’s Eastern monarch butterfly population, which includes a “super-generation” that migrates up to 3,000 miles to Mexico in fall, is estimated to be down by more than 80% since the 1990s.
The main problem, scientists say, is the loss of habitat for milkweed, the only plant on which the butterflies will lay their eggs. The butterflies qualified for federal endangered species status in 2020, but have not yet obtained it, due to a waiting list.
At the Illinois Environmental Council, which championed the monarch plates and pushed for them repeatedly when they stalled, Executive Director Jen Walling said interest has remained strong.
“I definitely think that the vast majority that signed up — if they still live here and are still alive — they’ll be (getting) these plates,” Walling said. “Folks are just really excited about this opportunity.”
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias recalled that when he was on the campaign trail in 2022, the plates came up repeatedly. There were questions in all corners of the state, he said. Environmentalists were interested, as were Latino groups.
Giannoulias declined to point fingers regarding the delay but said the butterfly plate got caught in a “cocoon of red tape.”
“I committed on the campaign trail and in the first few months of office that we would do whatever it takes — work with every group — to get it done,” said Giannoulias, who is in his first term.
A spokesman for his office said that people who have already signed up for the plates should receive them within a month.
“This is about more than just license plates,” said Giannoulias. “It’s No. 1 about an endangered insect that brings enormous environmental benefits and is essential for ecosystems to survive. No. 2 it’s about a state symbol that has great cultural significance, particularly amongst the Latino community. And No. 3, it’s about government accountability and making sure that citizens that we serve in Illinois get what they pay for.”
The plates will cost $54, which includes a $29 plate replacement fee and a $25 monarch plate fee. Fifteen dollars from the monarch plate fee will go to a Department of Natural Resources roadside monarch habitat fund.
One of the reasons the plates took so long to finalize was that they were the first of their kind in Illinois. Due to concerns that the wide range of colorful specialty plates in the state were creating problems for law enforcement, Illinois went to a new system in 2015.
The legislature decided that all new specialty plates promoting charitable causes would have the same standardized background, with room for a big decal representing a specific cause.
The monarch plate was the first of the new standardized specialty plates to get legislation allowing it to proceed.
State Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, who sponsored that legislation in 2016, cited the environmental importance of the monarch, as well as the butterfly’s meaning for the state’s Mexican Americans, many of whom hail from Jalisco, near where a super-generation of migrating monarchs spend the winter.
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“It just fit,” Hernandez said of the monarch plate. “It was the right time, it was a state insect, and then the fact that it symbolized the migration of families from Jalisco to Chicago.”
At the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which designed the monarch decals, director of communications Jayette Bolinski said via email that there were multiple reasons for delays.
“It took a while to work through the design process and specs with the secretary of state’s office. The first sticker design was deemed too small by the secretary of state’s office, and they promulgated administrative rule changes to increase the size of the sticker. COVID-19 occurred in the middle of the design process and delayed progress further,” Bolinski wrote.
Standard said that when she first heard about the monarch plate, she went to her local Department of Motor Vehicles office, paid her $10 deposit and signed up.
She said she believes she went back for an update, but then she moved on: “You pick your battles, right?”
As a utility vehicle, her monarch-mobile only needs a sticker, so she plans on affixing her new plates to her Subaru, where she hopes they will spark curiosity about her favorite insect.