Saving the Migration – A Newsy Documentary

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.

Monarchs rely on milkweeds for food and for breeding habitat, but over 860 million stems were lost in the northern United States over the last decade. Scientists with the USGS and partners examined the density of Eastern migratory monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico from 1979-2002 and the amount of milkweed plants available to them in North America.

The study found that 3.62 billion milkweed stems are needed to reestablish this monarch population, but only 1.34 billion stems remain in the U.S.

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.

Right now in Washington and Oregon, 380,000 honeybee hives are at work pollinating cherry, pear, and apple orchards.

Last month, a million hives—three-quarters of the nation’s entire stock of commercial honeybees—were pollinating almonds in the Central Valley of California.

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.

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 Mexico emerges from the most violent election campaign within living memory and embarks on the presidency of Andres López Obrador, one prominent citizen watches at a diagonal: a veteran of Mexico’s other war – not that over narco-traffic and its clients in politics, but that against nature.

In a recent interview with the daily El Universal, Homero Aridjis – award-winning poet and former ambassador – described all the candidates at last June’s election as “environmental illiterates” – referring to the battle he has fought for decades now, and which he sees reaching its final stages – for Mexico’s natural and cultural heritage.

  In the U.S. alone, there are more than 17,000,000 acres along federal, state and county highways that can potentially…

According to several widely-cited refereed journal articles, monarch butterfly populations may have declined precipitously over the last decade due to a number of man-made and natural factors…

dramatic reduction in milkweed densities on a hundred million or more acres of row crop farmlands due to intensified glyphosate use in weed management practices…

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.

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.

As most of you know, the summer of 2015 produced a strong migration and a relatively large overwintering population (4.01 hectares). To place this population growth in context, let’s review the last several years.

The population declined following each of the three growing seasons from 2011-2013. There were aspects of each season that account for these declines. For example, the temperatures from March through August in 2012 were warmer – actually hotter – than for any year going back to 1895.

Plant and protect native milkweeds and nectar plants, while making sure that the plants you transplant or plant as seeds are native to your region. Use locally sourced material when possible.

Avoid the use of herbicides and pesticides on or near these plants.

Scientists at the University of Michigan are working on a long-term project to help predict how monarchs will respond to climate change, and what we can do to save them.

Milkweed grown in carbon dioxide-filled chambers could help scientists predict the fate of monarch butterflies. The monarch butterfly population is already on the decline, and milkweed is their primary food source.

Today, a coalition of more than 125 conservation, beekeeping, food safety, religious and farming advocacy groups rallied in front of the White House and delivered more than four million petition signatures calling on the Obama administration to put forth strong protections for bees and other pollinators.

The rally coincided with both a D.C. metro ad campaign, and Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and John Conyers’ (D-MI) reintroduction of the Saving America’s Pollinators Act…