Monarch Decline

In an agreement approved today, the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety accepted an extended deadline for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide on protection for monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act.

In light of the extreme effects climate had on the butterfly’s population last year, two more overwintering counts will be available before a listing decision is issued in December 2020.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not high on most physicians’ worry lists. If we think at all about biotechnology, most of us probably focus on direct threats to human health, such as prospects for converting pathogens to biologic weapons or the implications of new technologies for editing the human germline.

But while those debates simmer, the application of biotechnology to agriculture has been rapid and aggressive.

It was a dark and stormy day in Washington DC when sixty thought leaders from the farm community, industry, government and non-profits met next to the White House grounds to discuss pollinators; we could hardly see First Lady Michelle Obama’s new pollinator garden through all the pouring rain.

Nevertheless, it was cause for celebration…

Bounding out of a silver Ford pickup into the single-digit wind-flogged flatness that is Iowa in December, Laura Jackson strode…

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.

The western population of monarch butterflies is in steep decline, according to a recent study released by the Xerces Society, having fallen 74 percent in the past two decades, from roughly 1.2 million in 1997 to fewer than 300,000 butterflies in 2015.

Studies have documented the drop in eastern populations over the past several years, but this is the first time we’ve been able to understand the risks to the western population, which resides west of the Rocky Mountains.

The David Suzuki Foundation is calling on governments and rail, road and hydro agencies across Canada to join the growing ranks of milkweed lovers who are rallying to support monarch butterfly conservation.

Over the past month, U.S. federal and state agencies have made encouraging announcements, including a commitment of US$3.2 million for programs to grow milkweed — the plant monarchs depend on — in schoolyards and gardens and on highway roadsides from Mexico to Minnesota.

Nearly every autumn, I head to the hills to band and release hawks, eagles and other powerful raptors as they ride the mountains’ updraft on their southern migration. While there, I always used to marvel at another autumnal migrant, tiny but no less magnificent — monarch butterflies, flapping earnestly on their delicate wings, dappling the ridge top orange and black.

Although they weigh less than a tenth-of-an-ounce, the monarchs’ 2,500-mile annual transcontinental journey to Mexico is longer than that of most raptors. They fly north from Mexico across the Midwest and up the eastern seaboard, to Canada — and back again, all in one summer. The yearly trek requires several generations.

Enhancing Native Pollinator Populations on Farms. We need these farming partners to pollinate our fruit and vegetable crops, yet our native pollinators and honey bees are struggling from multiple threats of pesticide exposure, habitat loss, parasites and diseases.

John Hayden from The Farm Between in Jeffersonville, VT will present on who the native pollinators are, why they are in trouble…

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.

The number of monarch butterflies that completed an annual migration to their winter home in a Mexican forest sank this…

The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety as co-lead petitioners joined by the Xerces Society and renowned monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed a legal petition today to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for monarch butterflies, which have declined by more than 90 percent in under 20 years.

During the same period it is estimated that these once-common iconic orange and black butterflies may have lost more than 165 million acres of habitat…

There is growing evidence that many pollinators and plants are being triggered into earlier but not necessarily synchronous activity by the same temperature shifts associated with global warming. Find out what strategies you can implement in your own garden, orchard, or farm to enhance your plant pollinator habitat.

With climatic uncertainty now “the new normal,” many farmers, gardeners, and orchardists in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt how they grow food in the face of climate change…

As organic fruit farmers, John and I are very appreciative of our farming partners, the native pollinators and honey bees that do extensive work on our farm. We have tried to develop the farm as a holistic ecosystem and take seriously the charge of being stewards of the land during our tenure here.

About seven years ago, we noticed a decline in bumble bee and other native bee populations.

The Sweet Briar community was saddened to learn of the death of Lincoln Brower, a world-renowned entomologist and research professor at the College. Brower died peacefully at his home in Nelson County on Tuesday, July 17, 2018, after an extended illness.

Brower came to Sweet Briar in 1997 after retiring from the University of Florida as Distinguished Service Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, joining his wife and research collaborator,