Monarch Butterfly nearing extinction

https://www.thedodo.com/monarch-butterf ... 94512.html

But, there is some hope.

I have seen this happening in Portland, Maine for several years:  We are weedwacking the milkweeds into non-existence.  

I wrote a "Letter to the Editor" of the Portland Press Herald….to get the word out about the plight of all butterflies.

Last Summer, for whatever reason, a single milkweed plant appeared on my property and several months later a monarch showed up and landed on it, staying only for several minutes, then flying off.  I saw just 3 monarchs in Maine last Summer.  The monarch that landed on the milkweed stayed motionless the entire time and was peering out from the underside of a leaf.  I checked for eggs…there were none.

This upcoming Summer I will be planting milkweed seeds on my property.  You should too.

We cannot stop the destruction of the pine trees in Mexico that it uses to roost in all Winter, but we can re-establish its American habitat.

PLEASE DEDICATE A SMALL PORTION OF YOUR LAND TO THE PLANTING/ESTABLISHMENT OF  MILKWEEDS.

Thank you
Robert King
http://itsaboutnature.net

A huge factor in the disappearance of the Monarchs, IMO, is the fact that many more acres of GM crops are being planted and then sprayed with Roundup. Soon they may be sprayed with another herbicide that was one part of Agent Orange (2,4D). Much of the milkweed has been killed this way. The link you posted alludes to this by way of another link. I wrote a bit about this in the thread I started on GMOs. Something else to know is that there are different kinds of milkweed and many people plant the wrong kind. I will try to locate a link I think I posted about this. Bees can be affected, as well.
Here's a link I posted earlier:

http://monarchjointventure.org/get-invo ... -monarchs/

and here's one about milkweed:

http://monarchjointventure.org/images/u ... tFINAL.pdf

and a finder for milkweed seed:

http://www.xerces.org/milkweed-seed-finder/

and another article:

http://www.ourhabitatgarden.org/creatur ... owing.html

I will keep posting links as I find them.

http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/he ... milkweeds/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... y-science/

http://www.joyfulbutterfly.com/milkweed ... -monarchs/

In this last one, read under "Best Milkweed for Monarchs".

Joe

Thank you Robert for your help in butterfly conservation...the fly will not go extinct but populations may become extinct, there is a world wide population of the bug (west coast Monterrey California among others) and I hope you succeed keeping the winter population in your area viable.

Ok, thanks guys.  I too learn more things everyday about the endless fascination that is nature.  I love it!  Did not know about the "fly" and all of that you mention Mike in O. 

And I really do need your information regarding which milkweed species to plant Joe.

I will quickly check those links now.

I have been converting my piece of land here inside Portland to all native herbs.  it is working but it is a slow process (lots of work); i.e. I am getting responses from local butterflies and bees.   It is so much fun and adds greatly to my nature photography.  

Last Summer I established the gorgeous and native heliopsis helianthoides; a native to midwest NA, but still acceptable (IMO) to plant here in East NA, because it is native to NA and it is a perennial that promises to be loaded with butterflies and bees in future years.

https://www.google.com/#q=heliopsis+hel ... unflowers)

and Joe Pye Weed.:

https://www.google.com/#q=Joe+pye+weed

Robert King
http://itsaboutnature.net
It's all about beefing up the base of the terrestrial web…..with natives!

SantaJoe:

Just emailed the xerces link you shared…...to a bunch of folks.   With this kind of networking…..I believe we an actually change things over the long haul!

Do you know the best way to mass mail?  I am currently using BCC in gmail.  But it often repeats an address and it takes time to click onto each address.  I am often the last to catch on to such techniques. 

Thanks

Afterthought:  I knew I had seen that name before.  Last Winter…. Picked up a book written by Xerces Society

http://www.amazon.com/Attracting-Native ... 5TEVY4H77Y

A very good book too….though (at this time anyway) I rate "Bringing Nature Home" by Tallamy above all others on this subject.

"herbicides in soybean and corn fields has killed off much of the milkweed on which butterflies lay their eggs."

Yep.... all of us double bacon 1/4 pounder lovers devouring up the landscape with the need for feed crops to support those animals for slaughter strike again.. Just gotta have that meat cause we're such carnivores...yum..yum...yum...

I wonder what human nature will be like once natural nature is gone?

Paul

 I also love photographing butterflies and have worked with friends in planting all sorts of organic gardens with milkweed and many other butterfly attractants.  I see monarch butterflies every day around the many gardens I enjoy.

Let us keep planting and tending milkweed in our gardens.,

OK, I'll cut back on the quarter pounders too.

Hi All,

I highly encourage everyone to help plant milkweed.  It has numerous benefits.

Last year my wife and I established a Monarch Waystation on our land in Montana using seed we acquired from Monarch Watch, (monarchwatch.org) they have special seed packs for the Eastern and Western US. 

Even though we are on the edge of a "flyway" and had only seen one Monarch on our property in the 10 years we lived  here, we had hope.  We had made contact with Dr. Chip Taylor (founder of Monarch Watch in 1992) who runs tagging programs to monitor migrations and we followed his directions on establishing the waystation, and conducting a "Rescue, Raise and Release" program.  Unfortunately even when a female finds milkweed to lay her eggs on, only about 12% survive past the 5th instare stage (Michelle D. Prysby).  The RRR program consists of rescuing the eggs, raising the caterpillars until emerging from the chrysalis, then releasing them. My wife says it's a lot of work, especially removing the caterpillar poop every day during the two weeks before forming a chrysalis, but WELL WORTH IT. Feeding the caterpillars milkweed from our garden was the easy and fun part. 

We had over 50% survival for our rescue's and the butterflies utilized the nectar plants we had established.

Not only did we have great photo opps that will enable us to conduct education programs here near (and hopefully in) Yellowstone Park, but several photographer friends had a great time making their photos.  See my posts to naturescapes from this spring http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/memb ... le&u=13936 

Leo

Just going through some older postings here. I missed your comment Leo. Thanks for the reference.

My first priority this Spring will be to plant milkweeds. I had one milkweed naturally germinate and grow last Summer. One day a Monarch came by, landed on it and stayed for several minutes and then flew out of the area. This upcoming Spring I will make sure that there are plenty of milkweed plants.

Robert King
http://itsaboutnature.net/

Planting milkweeds is great and something that might help some if lots of people do it. However. I have tons of it in my yard and field. We have always had lots of monarchs. Before mowing we'd go out and pick the small milkweed plants that have popped up in the grassy areas. Monarchs seem to like those best and we always found eggs. We would put them in an aquarium and put fresh milkweed eggs in daily and release them by the dozen. Fast forward to the last two years. We still have tons of milkweed. More in fact than before and of 3 or 4 varieties. Almost NO monarchs and not a single egg found. I'm in CT and it's the same or similar as you go north. In the fall we did see some in migration etc but none of the clusters of just a couple years ago. Now I hear Lowe's and Home Depot will be marketing a new grass seed next year or so that is GMO and Roundup resistant so people will be able to spray their entire lawns and kill everything else including milkweed that might be growing on the edges. It doesn't look good folks, we've experienced a major collapse of the population in the northeast.

What bothers me most about the latest GMOs developed, is that they are resistant to not only Roundup, but 2,4D as well. It is not going to be long before more plants and trees besides milkweed are eliminated before their importance is known. I know of people who use 2,4D to kill Siberian Elms. They are tough to get rid of, as many of us know, but 2,4D does the job.

Joe

SantaFeJoe wrote:What bothers me most about the latest GMOs developed, is that they are resistant to not only Roundup, but 2,4D as well. It is not going to be long before more plants and trees besides milkweed are eliminated before their importance is known. I know of people who use 2,4D to kill Siberian Elms. They are tough to get rid of, as many of us know, but 2,4D does the job.

Joe

Joe, why do people want to destroy Siberian Elms?  Since my area is one of the few places where the American Elm is still around (probably not much longer since the species is all but extinct), I would think people would like the Asian variety (since it is resistant to the fungus...and the the cause)

Siberian Elms are very invasive and spread their seeds everywhere. They get into plumbing and break sewer pipes and walls with ease. My dad once cut one down and used part of a branch for a mailbox post. Before long, it was growing again! Their seeds collect along walls and germinate easily. If you cut the young trees instead of pulling them out, they grow stronger and deeper roots that are harder to kill. The Elm Beetles that are attracted to them, also are undesirable, but don't kill the tree, only the leaves. They are about as bad as Tamarisk (Salt Cedar) to get rid of, but without the salt that Tamarisk gathers. They have been declared a noxious tree in New Mexico:

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOC ... 410128.pdf

They quickly crowd out native species of trees.

Joe

We have been on a campaign to kill the base of our terrestrial food webs.  Most people have been in on this…. with few realizing that they have been doing the wrong thing.  That is the power of advertising.

Milkweeds and Monarchs
1.  Populations of many butterfly species have become fragmented enough that in order to re-establish butterflies in many local areas, it may be necessary to transplant eggs onto host plants.

2. We may not have seen the worst yet for the monarchs.  But even then, we can re-establish Monarchs, as long we still have Monarch stock.    

3.  It is going to require that all people begin to become concerned about this.  And I do not believe that has happened yet.  

4.  I believe that progress is being made….slowly.  They let the Monarch population get very low before they even started to pay attention.  And it was not due solely to Monsanto and the other pesticide companies.  Don't get me wrong; they have to be stopped.  But for the last 10 years they have also been weed-wacking every single patch of milkweed plants they could find….along with all the other native herbs.   Who am I referring to?  Virtually everybody!  

As a kid in Maine, I can remember that large fields of native herbaceous plants abounded.   I assumed that they would always be there.  Just over the last two decades, it never occurred to me, as I photographed bees and butterflies in wildflower meadows, that their existence would soon be threatened.   I am shocked at how quickly it happened.   Back when I was a kid in those fields, milkweed was common to abundant and ubiquitous.    Well…..it is not abundant now……not anywhere that I know of.  In fact it is rare and local.   But it is starting to come back.  

5.  Starting about 20 years ago, the word "wildflowers" began to be replaced by the word "weeds".  Today, there is hardly a wildflower species that gets respect from the average American.  It is the sad truth.  You can credit television and advertising for that.  

"The only good weed is a dead weed"  

I cannot express how much I hate that statement.  But people are slowly beginning to see that they have been lied to.  Things are slowly changing for the better.  At Maine's capital buildings in Augusta, people are picketing to get the insecticides and herbicides the hell off the shelves.  We have been putting pressure on Lowe's and Home Depot to get them off the shelves.  Here in Maine we have been on television with all of this.  We will take up the fight again this Spring and we will continue with this……..until we win.   

Asiatic Bittersweet
I refuse to use any pesticides on my grounds here in Maine…except for one chemical, applied in just one way….on just one particular invasive!  I have/use glyphosate (I believe it is RoundUp for brush) on the worst invasive species we have ever seen in Maine.  It is Asiatic Bittersweet and it stands to kill every one of our native trees.  I kill it by pulling up by the roots.  If I am unable to pull it I will sever the main stem and then apply this chemical to the now-exposed basal section that was severed.  I do this when the plant is living; i.e. in the heart of the growing season.  It is only in this way that I can be sure that I have killed the vine.  

I am planting all native herbs and doing whatever it takes to assure the continuation and health of my existing native herbs.  At this time, these are primarily goldenrod and blue aster with a few other natives mixed in.  But as I said before, I now have my first Joe-Pye weed and False Sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) plants established.  Both are strong North American natives and are loved by all the bees and butterflies.   In the future, I will have a high diversity of insect species feeding at these flowers.  

I am constantly looking over my grounds and identifying my plants.  Most plants I know but many I do not…and it can require weeks to ID some of the plants.  Once identified, a plant is either nurtured or pulled up by the roots.  If it gets pulled I make sure it goes in an area where it cannot possibly become re-established.  

Siberian Elm
I think it is obvious to all of us that exotic species are ones that have been introduced to areas for the first time.  Overwhelmingly, man is the principle vector.  An exotic plant species becomes invasive because in its new land, it has no insect enemies to contend with.  There is nothing to stop it from spreading.  Whereas our native systems took many millennia to become established and so each component has its enemies….so each component is held in check.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  That is the way it was for many years…until we started bringing in ornamentals.  Most nurseries still persist with exotic ornamentals.  But that is slowly changing too.  I visit a lot of nurseries in the Summer months.  I let them know that I want only natives and that they should not be selling exotics anymore.  

What is worse, is that many nursery plants come with neonicotinoids intrinsic throughout the plant!  So when an insect tries to eat the leaves it dies.  This is outrageous!  It is sick and it must be stopped.  As I said, in Maine, we have been bringing this to the television and we will continue to inform the public.  They are beginning to listen.  What's right is right.       

Agan, I want to recommend the book "Bringing Nature Home".  

http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Nature-H ... 0881929921

At Amazon this book has 175 reviews and every one of them rated this book 5 stars!  This book gets right to the heart of everything you need to know to reverse the problem we are discussing here.   The objective is for each of us to make it right again for the base of our terrestrial food webs again….on the land that each of us owns.   And the key to that is in re-establishing all of our native primary producers, our plants…..at the very base.  If we can do that, we can begin to get our native insects back and the systems will begin maintaining themselves again.  And another very exciting part of this is that by re-establishing our native plants on our individual lands….we are helping to establish our own little nature photography studios.  That is exciting!

The stability of a system is directly related to the diversity of its native species. 

Robert King
http://itsaboutnature.net

Jim Zipp wrote:Planting milkweeds is great and something that might help some if lots of people do it.  However.  I have tons of it in my yard and field.  We have always had lots of monarchs. Before mowing we'd go out and pick the small milkweed plants that have popped up in the grassy areas.  Monarchs seem to like those best and we always found eggs.  We would put them in an aquarium and put fresh milkweed eggs in daily and release them by the dozen.  Fast forward to the last two years.  We still have tons of milkweed.  More in fact than before and of 3 or 4 varieties.  Almost NO monarchs and not a single egg found. I'm in CT and it's the same or similar as you go north.  In the fall we did see some in migration etc but none of the clusters of just a couple years ago.  Now I hear Lowe's and Home Depot will be marketing a new grass seed next year or so that is GMO and Roundup resistant so people will be able to spray their entire lawns and kill everything else including milkweed that might be growing on the edges.  It doesn't look good folks, we've experienced a major collapse of the population in the northeast.

You are right….and I am very grateful for you feeling this way and expressing it.  Thank you very much.  Thank you all on this thread for seeing the problem. 

This whole thing is going to swing the other way.  We are going to re-educate the people.  More people are listening.  It is slow going but it is working.   The truth stands alone. 

Robert

More news:

http://news.yahoo.com/monarch-butterfly ... 19206.html

http://news.yahoo.com/more-monarchs-ret ... 42326.html

What is sad is that in Mexico they now cover only 1.65 acres compared to 44.5 acres in 1996!

Joe