Each year for Mother’s Day, flowers are the “gift of choice” for Moms since they represent such colorful beauty, fragrance and intricate designs.
Whether it is a vase of fresh cut flowers, an indoor arrangement or perennials for the outside garden, flowers help us express our heart-felt sentiment on Mother’s Day…
It’s a welcome summer sight: butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. But we could be seeing less of them. A study released today points a finger at road salt.
According to the study, researchers from University of Minnesota found butterflies that were fed a high-sodium diet only had a 10 percent survival rate, compared to a 40 percent to 50 percent survival rate for butterflies that were fed low-to-medium sodium diets.
Let me speak to you as a familiar, because of all the years I’ve cherished members of your tribe. Of course, I also know you’re only yourself, just as I remember the uniqueness of every intern, WWOOFer, and summer weed-puller who has spent a season or two on our family’s farm. Some preferred to work without shoes.
Monarch butterflies are known for their striking flame-orange and black appearance, and especially for their mass migration in their millions to spend winters in the mountain forests of Mexico. But despite growing problems with deforestation in Mexico, their struggle begins at home in the United States and Canada.
The butterflies that fly to Mexico are the great-great-great grandchildren of the monarchs that were in Mexico the previous winter. In 2013 the overwintering population in Mexico covered 0.67 hectares of fir forest (about 44 million butterflies) the lowest since counts began in 1994.
A small garden is taking root around the corner from an East Chicago ArcelorMittal plant. Its presence on the 3000 block of Michigan Avenue is to draw another type of visitor to the industrial grounds – monarch butterflies.
JobLink, which has provided classes and training to mill workers since 1980, is providing a class for ArcelorMittal employees to come in their off-time in a lot next to its office and put in some elbow grease for the garden to bloom.
Mexican poet Homero Aridjis wants to build a solar barrier between his country and the United States — and have the United States pay for it by selling electricity to customers in border cities.
Aridjis, an internationally known poet, novelist and environmental leader, said he has received overwhelming support for the Mexican-built barrier, first proposed by him and James Ramey in a December article on the Huffington Post website.
We’ve framed the environmental problem the wrong way. There is no environment out there and we’re here, and we’ve got to regulate our interaction with it.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we are doing to our surroundings, we’re doing directly to ourselves.
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.
Plant and protect native milkweeds and nectar plants, while making sure that the plants you transplant or plant as seeds are native to your region. Use locally sourced material when possible.
Avoid the use of herbicides and pesticides on or near these plants.
Los tres niveles de gobierno, instituciones académicas, de investigación y sociedad civil, se comprometieron a unir esfuerzos tendientes a proteger el fenómeno de la Mariposa Monarca y a pugnar porque aumente el número de lepidópteros que año con año llega a los santuarios de Michoacán y del Estado de México.
Al inaugurarse el Segundo Encuentro Internacional de Investigación y Conservación de la Mariposa Monarca, el Comisionado Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, Luis Fueyo…
A survey of monarch butterflies overwintering in California shows that the population has not rebounded. Although the total number of monarchs counted this year was greater than last, the difference is due to a large increase in volunteer effort. Counts at major sites were down when compared to recent years.
Volunteers with the Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count visited 253 sites and tallied a total of 298,464 monarchs—a fraction of the 1.2 million monarchs recorded in the late 1990s.
Today, President Obama, Mexican President Peña Nieto, and Canada’s Prime Minister Harper committed their nations to taking steps to protect the monarch butterfly migration across Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Recent scientific evidence by World Wildlife Fund and Mexico’s National Commission…
Monarch numbers are declining; this decline is statistically significant (Brower et al. 2012) and readily apparent from data on the area occupied by monarchs on the overwintering roost in Mexico.
While we saw more monarchs during the summer of 2014 than we did last year or the year before, and will thus hopefully see more in Mexico this winter, it’s unlikely that the population will be anywhere near as large as it was a decade ago.
My mantra has always been “the impact of the individual, the impact of the individual…” I have had great teachers in my life that made sure I realized that we indeed make a difference – but it’s up to us to choose if it’s a positive or negative one.
This all started with Gary Nabhan and his wonderful, heartwarming idea for Make Way for Monarchs to sponsor a “Day of Action and Contemplation”…
Ten years ago, a grain farmer in Northeast Nebraska wrote me a letter: “I am concerned that the recent large use of Roundup-ready crops (which I use) and the subsequent widespread use of Roundup herbicide (which I also use), have led to the virtual elimination of milkweed in fields and crops,” he said.
But it wasn’t the loss of milkweed that alarmed him most; it was the fact that with its disappearance, the monarch butterfly had also left his farm.
It is likely that at least 170,000,000 acres of actively-sown annual field crops in American farmscapes are now depleted of their formerly-abundant milkweeds and monarch butterflies.