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by Blck-shouldered Kite on Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:28 pm
Blck-shouldered Kite
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Joined: 31 Dec 2010
Location: Maine
What is happening to the Monarch is the tip of the iceberg of what is already in works if we do not heed the warnings.  The Monarch just happens to be high profile.  Many more butterflies and all terrestrial invertebrates are to follow, if we do not change our practices.      

But potentially, there is very good news within the plight of the Monarch.     

Think of the Monarch as the Poster Child for the native insect community.    ALL lepidopterans, even all insects, should benefit from any gains that can be made to recover the Monarch. 

To increase production, American ag has eliminated those strips of "weeds" that have always existed between the crop fields and the roadways.  Those weeds were wildflowers (still mostly native) and those strips were composed of many more native wildflower species than just the MILKWEED.  

You may not be able to do much to effect the decisions made in American ag, but you can act directly to increase America's butterfly production.

And remember, all native insects in suburban America are in trouble....ALL OF THEM.  There is an estimated 40 million acres of open land in suburban America. 

And Americans, to ACHIEVE THE PERFECT LAWN, are still working to destroy all native plants and ALL insects in those open areas.

Again......if you own any amount of land in suburban America, we are asking you to do just two things:

1.  Please take just half of the open area that you own and convert that half into NATIVE wildflowers.  Your local plant nursery will help, although most of them sell almost all exotics ("ornamentals").  Do NOT plant anymore ornamentals.  Largely, our native insects (that is, what is left of them) do not eat the exotic plants that we have planted on our lawns.  They eat the native plants, that we have taken for granted over the last 4-5 decades.  You know, the ones people poison in order to get a perfect lawn.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND:
It is actually difficult to find a nursery that sells a large variety of native, herbaceous plants.  You can find physically attractive plants from all of the world in America's nurseries.  And BTW, what do you think is the suspected principle vector to the importation of exotic insects and exotic plant diseases into America?  That's right...it is the exotic (again..."ornamentals") plants that Americans have created a demand for.  If it looks good, it is what they have wanted....without regard to any negative impact it may have had.  This has been going on since I was a little boy and I am in my 66th year.  I know, because I always mowed lawns to save up for fishing equipment and I always looked at those plants.  It seemed odd to me as a boy.  I asked myself, why those plants were not the same ones I saw in the woods.  You who have lived in the country or suburbia may have asked yourselves the same question.  I pity those who were raised in a 100% urban area.  

BUY AND PLANT NATIVES !!!
It is time for us to tell the nurseries that we want native plants.  I started doing this 3 years ago.  They can get them, but you have to ask.  I have found one such nursery in Portland surroundings that is starting to focus on natives.  It is Allen, Sterling and Lothrop, in Falmouth, Maine.   Skillins Greenhouse has all but asked me to leave, simply because i have been outspoken about the need for more natives.  The owner of Skillins has told me that he feels he has done a good job of providing the public with the plants that they want.  Again, he is right.  But almost all of his plants are exotics.  And that is not the owner's fault.  It is what the public still wants. 

That has to change, if we are to bring nature back to our suburban homes.  The word is slowly getting out to the essential need for native plants.

Here are a couple of helpful links to the results of Doug Tallamy's (PhD) research on the essential need for native plants. 

http://www.bringingnaturehome.net/garde ... -life.html

A listing of native plants:

http://www.bringingnaturehome.net/what-to-plant.html

2.  Please, do not put down any chemical, organic or otherwise, for the purpose of controlling plants or insects.  All that stuff is meant to kill the NATIVE PRIMARY PRODUCERS (what Monsanto calls WEEDS and naturalists rightly call Wildflowers!) and all the insects, the NATIVE PRIMARY CONSUMERS that eat those PRIMARY PRODUCERS and in turn are eaten by the SECONDARY CONSUMERS.  There are 4 million insect species in the Biosphere.  Far less than 1% are our enemies.  Yet, we are waging war on all of them.  Our native insects are vital to our terrestrial food web.  Without our native insects we will have no native passerine birds and no native toads...to name a few.  

Let's spread the word and start converting just half of our open areas into native wildflowers.  You can still have your open area to use for whatever activities you want.  Let me finish by putting it this way.  I am certain that this trend of converting lawns into native wildflowers is going to increase.  So let's start now and be at the beginning of the curve, leading the way, because it is coming.  People want butterflies and once they begin to understand the basics of how it all works, they are going to stop poisoning the food web and start to plant more native plants.  

Please think about it.  Thank you

Robert
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