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Although Monarch butterflies declined severely in the past few years, many returned in a significant way to their wintering grounds in Mexico after undergoing serious declines, said experts on Friday.

"We are seeing the beginning of success," Daniel Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said at a World Wildlife Fund news conference in Mexico on Friday. "Our task now is to continue building on that success."

Hence, they have gone up to 68 percent of a 22-year average last year. They are found in about 10 acres of Mexican forest hibernation regions, indicates a new survey. In 2014, they covered only 2.8 acres, with a record low of 1.66 acres in 2013.

Every year in October, the orange-and-black butterflies shift between 1,200 to 2,800 miles from Canada through the U.S. They migrate during the winter to the temperate mountain forests of Michoacán State and Mexico State.

The problems they face include "deforestation and logging, pesticides, climate change and loss of milkweed", which is the plant they use to breed as they fly out, explains the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Larvae feed and grow on milkweed before metamorphosing into butterflies.

Even as the acreage expands to show the potential for recovery, the numbers remain much below the 45 acres in which the butterflies spend their winters during the peak year of 1996. After that, the butterfly species lost 90 percent of the population.

"What the scientific monitor is showing is that there is an apparent recovery in the last two years, which is why this is good news," said Omar Vidal, director general of the WWF in Mexico, according to The New York Times. "But the threats for the butterfly, for their migration, continue."

"Now more than ever, Mexico, the United States, and Canada should increase their conservation efforts to protect and restore the habitat of this butterfly along its migratory route," Vidal concluded.