First time Monarch butterflies didn't come on the Day of the Dead

[Eva]

This was on the New York Times I was reading on the plane yesterday. It somehow feels more important than it sounds, if that makes any sense ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?_r=0

On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned.

This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.[...]

The article goes on to blame the loss of monarchs and wild bees on nicotine-based pesticides, the loss of native vegetation due to excessive farming for biofuel, Roundup a herbicide that kills all plants except genetically modified crops and the the fact that plants people chose for their yards do not play important ecological roles.

Studies show that native oak trees in the mid-Atlantic states host as many as 537 species of caterpillars, which are important food for birds and other insects. Willows come in second with 456 species. Ginkgo, on the other hand, which is not native, supports three species, and zelkova, an exotic plant used to replace elm trees that died from disease, supports none. So the shelves are nearly bare for bugs and birds.

Native trees are not only grocery stores, but insect pharmacies as well. Trees and other plants have beneficial chemicals essential to the health of bugs. Some monarchs, when afflicted with parasites, seek out more toxic types of milkweed because they kill the parasites. Bees use medicinal resins from aspen and willow trees that are antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral, to line their nests and to fight infection and diseases. “Bees scrape off the resins from the leaves, which is kind of awesome, stick them on their back legs and take them home,” said Dr. Spivak.

Besides pesticides and lack of habitat, the other big problem bees face is disease. But these problems are not separate. “Say you have a bee with viruses,” and they are run-down, Dr. Spivak said. “And they are in a food desert and have to fly a long distance, and when you find food it has complicated neurotoxins and the immune system just goes ‘uh-uh.’ Or they become disoriented and can’t find their way home. It’s too many stressors all at once.”

The solution proposed seems to be rebuilding native plant communities

There are numerous organizations and individuals dedicated to rebuilding native plant communities one sterile lawn and farm field at a time. Dr. Tallamy, a longtime evangelizer for native plants, and the author of one of the movement’s manuals, “Bringing Nature Home,” says it’s a cause everyone with a garden or yard can serve. And he says support for it needs to develop quickly to slow down the worsening crisis in biodiversity.

When the Florida Department of Transportation last year mowed down roadside wildflowers where monarch butterflies fed on their epic migratory journey, “there was a huge outcry,” said Eleanor Dietrich, a wildflower activist in Florida. So much so, transportation officials created a new policy that left critical insect habitat un-mowed.

That means reversing the hegemony of chemically green lawns. “If you’ve got just lawn grass, you’ve got nothing,” said Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society, a leading organization in insect conservation. “But as soon as you create a front yard wildflower meadow you go from an occasional honeybee to a lawn that might be full of 20 or 30 species of bees and butterflies and monarchs.”

And it concludes with a not so subtle threat

First and foremost, said Dr. Tallamy, a home for bugs is a matter of food security. “If the bees were to truly disappear, we would lose 80 percent of the plants,” he said. “That is not an option. That’s a huge problem for mankind.”

I guess only the genetically modified crops that need no pollination would be available then, Monsanto wouldn't mind that...
Although the way the article concludes focusing on lawn grass and people's yards is nice because it points out what we can do about it, at the same time it diverts from the really big problem which is excessive farming, GMO and Terminator Seeds.

 

[Skyfarmr]

There are other contributing factors, as well. The above post has mentioned the importance of oak trees for many species of birds and insects.

Studies show that native oak trees in the mid-Atlantic states host as many as 537 species of caterpillars, which are important food for birds and other insects.

Here in Wisconsin, oak blight has been creeping across the southern two thirds of the state for the last 4-5 years. Oak blight is caused by a fungal infection (similar to Dutch Elm disease that wiped out most elms in the 60's and 70's). Fungal diseases love cool wet conditions, which is what we had in 2007,8 and 9. There was tomato blight problem during that time, as well. Over the last several years Wisconsin weather, as well as most of the Midwest, can be summed up as extreme, sort of like when it rains, it pours(floods) versus not being able to buy a drop of rain for weeks on end.

Despite the increase of prairie plantings by conscientious people to help our 2D co-habitants, on the whole it seems too little done, too late. We still have wind erosion displacing and dispersing all that toxic-laden farm dust and GMO pollen, drifting and landing everywhere during cultivation, especially during dry conditions.

When I was taking an ecology class back in the early 80's, my professor was doing research on the possible sources the nutrients accumulating in a local lake. Lake shore homeowners and farmers were being blamed for the runoff of their fertilized lake shore properties, no doubt a contributor, but he wasn't convinced this was the only source of nutrients feeding invasive weed species and disrupting the lake's ecology. This professor put out numerous petri dishes to capture air particles during various times of the year. He extrapolated the results and determined that the amount of particulates settling into the lake added up to multiple tons of nutrient rich, pesticide-laden soil from wind erosion annually. What this professor shared with us 30 years ago, was one of the few take-aways that left a lasting impression on me. Every time I hear some scientist go off about the dangers of CO2 increasing, I can't help thinking about all the other man made pollutants going up and eventually coming down as the global populace grows and adds to the numerous cancer causing, health impairing, wildlife crippling toxic particulates contributing not only to poor air and water quality, but also increasing the amount of precipitation in weather events.(precipitation formation can only occur with air particulates; more particulates, more precipitation.) Then take in to account the naturally accumulating particulates from volcanic ash , massive wildfires and cosmic debris entering our atmosphere and realize we're surely in for more of the same with increasing frequency.

A decreasing monarch population is just another symptom of our increasingly toxic world which is simultaneously undergoing cosmically inspired climate change and preparing for what seems like an inevitable "periodic cleansing".


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[gdpetti]

Hard not to notice the decline in the past decade or so if you are anywhere near a rural area. Everyone is now spraying poisons on their yards, why? because everyone else is and the meme of perfection grows like weeds in their minds. Add the farmers, who have to spray more and more because the poisons aren't working as well as they used to, so Monsanto and friends tell them to just spray more. MORE! (like vaccines hunh?)

You walk around the back roads and you just don't see many insects anymore. You used to see them everyone in their time of the season. Hard to quantify, maybe a 90% reduction??? :/

Think I saw a couple of monarchs, but that's about it, and I didn't see too many other butterflys, it's like they just don't come around here anymore, and I can't blame them. Who wants to eat and drink that poison? Guess, only we humans do.

The butterflies can't arrive, if they never left, because they were never born to begin with. This remind me of that article today or yesterday about the new probe sent off to study the loss of Earth's magnetic field, we only seem to notice after it's gone... I think that's a song... about a relationship...

"Let Her Go"

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you’re missin' home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go

 

[loreta]

It is a very sad situation. It is true: apart flies, insects are rare. This is not good news. And because we have less and less insects we have less and less birds. And it seems to me that life without birds is a very scary thing.

I live in the country, people here are not aware of anything. They don't care. They see animals, in general, as objects, tools. Birds? Can you do money with birds? No. So it is not important. And insects, any kind of insects, are not important at all. They are incapable to see the link between insects and life on earth.

There was a river here, some years ago. Not anymore. There was turtles, fish. Not anymore. Do you think people living in the country care? Not in this region. Is river something that can give money?

Tv, money, houses. That's something that people care, here and everywhere. Ecology? Is ecology something that give money now?

Everyone is responsible of what is happening. We make, as humans, our destiny. And it does not look very good. Not good at all! We will be extinct very soon, like the magnificent Monarchs.