Author Archive for Gary Nabhan
This changes everything: Herbicide use is increasing with GMO adoption not decreasing!
“This changes everything”–the line that Donald Trump stole from Naomi Klein (who referred to climate change, not emails) can only be authentically used in relation to one amazing news story this week: The front page Sunday NY Times article by Danny Hakim “Doubts About a Promised Bounty: Genetically Modified Crops Have Failed to Lift Yields and Ease Pesticide Use.”
Pollinator Plants of the Desert Southwest
The Desert Southwest harbors at least 41 of the 76 milkweed (Asclepias spp.) species known to exist in the lower 48 states. The species richness of milkweeds in this region is influenced by the tremendous diversity and range of vegetation types, soils, topography, climate, and the exposure of unusual rock types that occur over more than a 9,000 foot elevation range.
The nectar of milkweed flowers is attractive to dozens of insects including bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The bees that milkweed flowers attract to agricultural landscapes are important for pollinating a wide variety of vegetable forage and fruit crops.
Binational Workshops Build International Cooperation in Monarch and Milkweed Recovery
Eighteen months after the Tres Amigos (Mexican, U.S., and Canadian leaders) agreed to collaborate one monarch butterfly recovery, we can at least see this vision reaching across borders to take hold at the grass roots level. Thanks to technical and financial support from many agencies, universities and non-profits, August 2015 was the season for hands-on…
Migratory Monarchs as Messengers of Climate Change
Monarch butterflies: They are the iconic symbols of international cooperation in North America in the face of climate change.
Because of their long distance migration across a variety of climates and habitats, monarchs serve as a messenger of the collective global effects of climate change interacting with a variety of other stressors, natural and human-triggered.
Will superweeds, regulation create a perfect storm in Iowa farmlands?
Since the onset of spring, one kind of game-changing news after another has reached Iowa farmers. These announcements will affect the third of the state’s farmers who are struggling to control superweeds by using glyphosates and other herbicides.
New research revelations, government policy changes and farmers’ own dissatisfactions could radically alter both weed and pollinator management in the Midwest.
Milkweed Availability Survey
Make Way for Monarchs requests your updates on milkweed seed availability in your region.
According to some garden, nursery and farm journalists, the declines of monarchs created more demand for milkweeds than ever before in American history; and yet, we have no good numbers to document this. Help us explore what’s happening in your community or region by answering one or more of the following questions.
The Healing in Ferguson Missouri Hidden by Mainstream Media
Ferguson Missouri has stayed in the news for much of the summer and fall of 2014, and not much of what the media has been saying about this community has been pleasant, let alone laudatory.
But when I arrived in St Louis and asked my wife if we could go to Ferguson for a prayer vigil, I found a community unbelievably different from the one represented in the news.
Fasting for monarchs?
I will be on a LIQUIDS-ONLY FAST until December 20th, until Monarch butterflies are ensured enough milkweeds to lay eggs on and eat; THEN I WON’T EAT!
Today begins a season of fasting in remembrance of the fact that after a year of hand-wringing about monarch butterfly and milkweed declines, there is no substantial reorientation in our use of agricultural chemicals impacting them, no fewer acres going out of milkweed habitat and into ethanol production or urban development, and far less than 1000 acres of new milkweed habitat has been planted this year to offset the damage and deferred maintenance of healthy habitat that monarchs have suffered the last 15 years.
