Environmental Engineer and Farmer Nancy Hayden Lives Her Ideals

Renowned NASA climate scientist Dr. Jim Hansen often opens his public lectures with a discussion of the monarch butterfly migration. He has helped his grandchildren raise milkweed on their farm and for years they have followed the life cycle of monarchs through to fall migration.

The Hansen youth have also been involved as “citizen scientists” participating in tagging the migrating monarchs.

University of Arizona researchers are playing a leading role in an unprecedented effort to save America’s most iconic butterfly, the monarch.

Due to loss of habitat for milkweed – the sole food plant of the caterpillars – populations of this important pollinator have plummeted in recent years, leaving the monarch in dire straits.

Though small, pollinators play a big role in our lives. They make our world more beautiful — most flowering plant species rely on pollinators to reproduce. Pollinators also are responsible for keeping us fed. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports more than 75 percent of the world’s food crops rely on pollination by insects and other animals.

Without pollinators, there would be no coffee, chocolate, tomatoes or apples. There also would be no milk, cheese or ice cream — dairy cows eat alfalfa, which is pollinated by leafcutter and honey bees. Even spring break would take a hit.

Yesterday, the First Lady welcomed local students and FoodCorps leaders on the South Lawn for the sixth-annual planting of the White House Kitchen Garden.

The garden was first planted in 2009 to commence a nationwide conversation on healthy eating and inspired the First Lady to launch Let’s Move!

Did you know that one in every three bites of food you take required a pollinator visit? Pollination is essential for many of our favorite foods—from almonds to vanilla, and so many fruits and vegetables in between.

The decline of pollinators around the world is threatening not only our food supply but also the function of plant communities and ecosystems.

Environmentalist David Suzuki recently spoke with Bill about the lasting influence of the late biologist Rachel Carson. Although Suzuki never met Carson, her seminal 1962 book Silent Spring about the effects of pesticides on the environment, had a major impact on his work.

“Rachel Carson’s book was the first big document to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute guys, there are effects or costs that are associated with this huge technology.

Monarch butterflies, which pollinate many different kinds of wildflowers, are among nature’s great wonders. Their annual migration is one of the most awe-inspiring on Earth: Each fall, millions of these striking black-and-orange butterflies take flight on a 3,000-mile journey across the U.S. and Canada to wintering grounds in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains.

The monarch population, which is determined by measuring the number of hectares the butterflies occupy in their Mexico habitat, has declined to 2.48 hectares—almost 30 percent less than last year’s population.

We love butterflies, and monarch butterflies are called “monarch” for a reason. They are grand. All that fluttering orange and black display on a winged scale built to impress. To charm. But monarch butterflies are in trouble.

This year saw the smallest migration ever recorded to their winter retreat in the mountains of Mexico.

A major global assessment of pollinators is raising concerns about the future of the planet’s food supply.

A U.N.-sponsored report drawing on about 3,000 scientific papers concludes that about 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species (such as bees and butterflies) are facing extinction. Vertebrate pollinators (such as bats and birds) are somewhat better off by comparison — 16 percent are threatened with extinction, “with a trend towards more extinctions,” the researchers say.

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.

U.S. regulators will put new restrictions on the world’s most widely used herbicide to help address the rapid expansion of weeds resistant to the chemical, Reuters has learned.

The Environmental Protection Agency confirmed it will require a weed resistance management plan for glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s immensely popular Roundup weed-killer.

Early in 1958 after living for 6 months in her new house on Berwick Road Rachel Carson started the four year long writing project that would become her renowned Silent Spring.

Rachel’s observations of the nature she loved from the wide windows of her home provided joyful relief from the gathering of somber subject matter for her new book and served to remind her of a compelling reason for accepting this challenge –the urgent need to protect life on the planet from toxic chemical pesticide threats.

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.

As 2014’s National Pollinator Week begins, it is time to think critically about what constitutes tangible actions and credible research on behalf of monarch conservation in the midst of a key moment in American conservation history. Many conservationists fear that green-washing and tokenism will distract the public from supporting the essential work…

A severe late spring storm in central Mexico in March 2016 that struck the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve was unique because it was accompanied by high-velocity winds that eliminated the normal thermal protection provided by the Oyamel fir forest.

Temperatures throughout the forest merged with the colder open-area ambient temperatures. The storm was in effect a rain and snow storm sandwiched within a powerful and sustained wind storm, followed by lethal freezing that killed 31–38% of the butterflies in the Sierra Chincua and Cerro Pelón overwintering colonies. Several lines of evidence point to greater than 40% mortality of monarchs in the Rosario colony.