Saving the Migration – A Newsy Documentary

Make Way for Monarchs requests your updates on milkweed seed availability in your region.

According to some garden, nursery and farm journalists, the declines of monarchs created more demand for milkweeds than ever before in American history; and yet, we have no good numbers to document this. Help us explore what’s happening in your community or region by answering one or more of the following questions.

Hoping to focus attention on the plight of the monarch butterfly at a North American summit meeting next week, a group of prominent scientists and writers urged the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada to commit to restoring the habitat that supports the insect’s extraordinary migration across the continent.

Calling the situation facing the butterfly “grim,” the group issued a letter that outlined a proposal to plant milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food source, along its migratory route in Canada and the United States.

Threats to several of the world’s great animal migrations necessitate a research agenda focused on identifying drivers of their population dynamics. The monarch butterfly is an iconic species whose continental migratory population in eastern North America has been declining precipitously.

Recent analyses have linked the monarch decline to reduced abundance of milkweed host plants in the USA caused by increased use of genetically modified herbicide-resistant crops.

The eastern migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) has declined by 80% within the last two decades. One possible cause of this decline is the loss of 1.3 billion stems of milkweed (Asclepias spp.), which monarchs require for reproduction.

In an effort to restore monarchs to a population goal established by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and adopted by Mexico, Canada, and the US, we developed scenarios for amending the Midwestern US landscape with milkweed.

Sometime in the mid-1990s,Will Harris looked around at the Georgia farm that had been in his family for more than a century, and decided he didn’t want to pass it on to his daughters.

Not like this. His herd was unhappy. He was under constant financial stress.

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.

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.

Sigue la ruta que la Mariposa Monarca debe recorrer, desde el norte del continente americano, para llegar a nuestro país, a sus santuarios ubicados en los bosques altos de Michoacán y el Estado de México.

La vida de la mariposa monarca comienza en una planta llamada asclepia, donde los huevecillos son depositados. La historia de la mariposa monarca continúa después de 4 a 12 días, cuando emerge una oruga que se alimenta de la misma planta en la que nació y sobre la que se desarrolla hasta convertirse en un fuerte adulto alado.

Mexico’s monarch butterflies are suffering from an usual cold weather system that began two days ago with severe rain, wind, and cold temperatures battering butterflies to the ground.

As snow falls in the Monarch Biosphere, conservation of the other end of the monarchs’ life is criticized as inadequate. U.S. conservation groups today issued a suit against the government for failing to protect the monarchs under the Endangered Species Act.

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.

One of the hottest winters in history poses good news and bad news for migrating Monarch butterflies this season. The good news: warm weather and well-timed rains translate into a grand wildflower season with plenty of milkweed in South Texas.

The bad news: those same high temperatures in Mexico where the Monarchs overwinter mean that many butterflies have burned up much of their stored winter fats, creating a lack of fuel and extra stress for their journey north.

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.

It has been said that for any “movement” to succeed, a moving theme song is needed. That may be true.

Bob Dylan’s “The Times, They are a-changing” and “Blowing in the Wind”; Pete Seeger’s “We Shall Overcome” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and Peter, Paul and Mary’s “If I Had a Hammer” are but a tiny sample of the soul-moving tunes that come to mind when thinking of the 1960s civil rights movement.

They fly through the Louisville area each year on their way from Canada to Mexico — an iconic flutter of orange and black that has taught generations of Americans about the biology of life cycles and metamorphosis, but now may be at risk of vanishing.

Monarch butterfly populations have plummeted so much that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now believes there might be reason to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

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!