Environmental Engineer and Farmer Nancy Hayden Lives Her Ideals

This comprehensive report reveals the severe impacts of herbicide-resistant genetically engineered (GE) crops on the monarch population, which has plummeted over the past twenty years.

The report makes it abundantly clear: two decades of Roundup Ready crops have nearly eradicated milkweed – the monarch caterpillar’s sole source of food – in cropland of the monarch’s vital Midwest breeding ground.

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…

Last year NRDC filed a petition with EPA asking them to review the use of glyphosate (also known as Roundup) in light of its effects on monarch butterflies and to impose restrictions on its use. After more than a year, EPA has yet to respond to our petition so today we are filing a lawsuit to compel them to act with expediency.

Anyone who has been following the plight of the monarch butterflies knows that they are in trouble.

The annual migration of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) has high cultural value and recent surveys indicate monarch populations are declining….

The striking beauty of the monarch butterfly is unmistakable — but their uniqueness goes beyond the vivid orange and black wings that make them so recognizable.

These slight creatures weigh less than a dime, yet travel thousands of miles every year — 50 to 100 miles in just a day. An instinctive internal compass guides them on the same migration path as their ancestors — in spite of the fact that they have never taken the journey before. It’s nothing short of a miracle of nature.

But the butterflies that begin this majestic odyssey will never finish it.

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.

Western Michigan University Biological Sciences Professor Stephen Malcolm says the population of the monarch butterfly in North America has dropped over the last 20 years.

Malcolm was among a group of scientists that signed a letter delivered to President Obama, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I have a confession to make. A few years ago, on a farm I own in eastern Nebraska, I took 44 acres out of production, on purpose. That’s a lot.

Where corn and beans once grew, I planted tall, native grasses and wildflowers. Among area farmers, this was seen as nothing short of scandalous.

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.

How is the decline of monarch butterflies and its relation to the management of corn seen from south of the Mexican border with the U.S.? Recently, we went to the cradle of origin of maize in Oaxaca not to do our own research, but to simply listen to Mexican researchers, farmers, artists and chefs.

Because both the monarch and maize have been iconic symbols of life in Mesoamerica for millennia, we wanted to hear how Mexicans perceived issues surrounding their conservation from scientific, cultural and political perspectives.

The largest habitat recovery initiative in American history is needed to plant new and enhance existing populations of milkweeds and other native wildflowers for the recovery of monarch butterflies. This report offers insights—particularly for departments of transportation and other landscape managers—on how best to build collaborations to manage the milkweed seed supply chain to recover monarchs as well as crop pollinators in North America over the next decade.

More than 200 scientists, writers and artists have signed a letter addressed to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in advance of the North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa later this month.

The signers urge that swift and energetic actions be taken to save the monarch butterfly from the threats that endanger its survival. All three countries must work together to mitigate the loss of the butterflies’ breeding habitat and to terminate all logging and mining in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacan, Mexico.

In October, millions of monarch butterflies will make a long migration from Canada to Mexico, many stopping in Santa Cruz, Pacific Grove, and Big Sur along the way.

Millions of Monarch butterflies make the long journey from Canada to Mexico — many stopping in Pacific Grove ….

A new census found this winter’s population of North American monarch butterflies in Mexico was at the lowest level ever…

A group of Michigan State University researchers say there is a nexus between large-scale deaths of Monarch butterflies and the application of the widely applied herbicide glyphosate.

Their study looked at the application of glyphosate in counties in Illinois and Texas during different seasons in an effort to better understand its potential effect on the population of Monarch butterflies – which has been in sharp decline in recent years.