Monarch Decline

One of my most vivid childhood memories from Iowa’s corn country is watching clouds of monarch butterflies dance around the milkweed patch by our back steps and finding caterpillars on the leaves.

My brother and I raised them, as many kids do.

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.

Depleted monarch butterflies and honeybees could get a boost from Iowa farmers over the next few years, thanks in part to lower commodity prices that have prompted landowners to shift more than 100,000 acres of row crops into habitat for creatures vital to pollination.

Over the past four years, Iowa farmers have enrolled 127,005 acres in a federal conservation reserve program designed to sustain butterflies, bees, wasps, birds and bats — with all but 15,000 acres being added in the past year, according to the Iowa Farm Service Agency.

On today’s Your Call, we’ll talk about the plight of the monarch butterfly. Every year, monarchs migrate thousands of miles from Canada to Mexico, but their numbers are rapidly dwindling.

Habitat destruction from logging in Mexico and the elimination of milkweed in the US have brought this species to a tipping point.

Pollinators contribute substantially to the economy of the United States and are vital to keeping fruits, nuts, and vegetables in our diets. Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States.

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment.

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.

As I listened to Marla Spivak discuss the plight and prospects of our honeybees on Monday evening, it occurred to me that I was watching a masterful application of Albert Einstein’s principle that complex matters should be made as simple as possible – but not simpler.

Most of us have grasped by now that honeybees are under pressure from multiple sources, with certain insecticides, habitat loss, parasites and disease in the leading roles.

From the age of five, Fred Urquhart was fascinated by monarch butterflies in his Toronto neighbourhood. Born in 1911, he spent hours watching the orange and black insects flutter about, wondering: Where did they go in winter?

At school, he read voraciously about nature, especially monarchs and other insects.

The next time you’re tooling down the highway somewhere in America, take a look around: Those miles of medians and roadsides along our highways offer unexpected environmental benefits.

All those broad, green strips along the nation’s highways turn out be vital habitats for many small critters, as well as pollinators including bees, butterflies and birds.

Most of us are familiar with that icon of the insect world, the black and orange Monarch butterfly. What you might not know is that Monarch numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate.

80 percent of the population gone in the past 15 years. During the same time frame a 60 percent decline in the amount of milkweed growing out there on the great plains and in the Midwest.

All too often, species that humans care about only get attention when they are in crisis. Such is the case with monarch butterflies.

The insect, famed for its remarkable annual migrations, faced declines in habitat on both the Mexican and American ends of its range for decades, but now is the focus of an urgent push for a rescue.

Paul Mirocha’s elegant, precise and moving illustrations of monarchs and milkweeds have already begun to grace our website and public presentations, thanks to support recently received from the Compton Foundation.

He is considered by many to be among the most widely respected biological illustrators in North America, and his work has been featured on many…

Nestled between a drumlin and the Ganargua (Mud) Creek, Peacework Organic Farm is the oldest Community Supported Agriculture project in upstate NY, in our 26th year in 2014. Once the Humbert family dairy farm, the 148 acres of high quality land that we steward is the property of the Genesee Land Trust (GLT), which leases 109 acres to Peacework.

Eight years ago, members of the Peacework CSA contributed the money to the land trust to buy this farm when owner Doug Kraai died from cancer.

The Obama administration is hatching a plan to establish a 1,500-mile butterfly corridor along US Interstate 35 connecting Minnesota and Texas to protect the monarch butterfly.

The majestic North American monarch is well known for both its trademark orange and black stripes as well as its epic annual migration from Canada to Mexico.

On a Friday evening in January, a thousand people at the annual California Native Plant Society conference in San Jose settled down to a banquet and a keynote speech delivered by an environmental historian named Jared Farmer.

His chosen topic was the eucalyptus tree and its role in California’s ecology and history. The address did not go well. Eucalyptus is not a native plant but a Victorian import from Australia. In the eyes of those gathered at the San Jose DoubleTree, it qualified as “invasive,” “exotic,” “alien” — all dirty words to this crowd…