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California’s Monarch Butterfly Population Hits Record Low
- porpoisely 8y agoDupe? There's already a discussion on a general insect population decline on the frontpage. "Insect collapse" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoThe monarch story in particular really hits home for me. I’m glad both are up here.
- searine 8y agoThey might be two different issues. General insect collapse is likely dude to the overuse of broad spectrum insecticides. Monarch collapse is more likely due to reductions in milkweed population. Milkweed is often found on the edges of corn/soy fields so there is definitely an add on effect, but its probably not the root cause. The solution is pretty clear though, if you care about monarchs, plant some milkweed.
- artursapek 8y agoI have a ziploc bag in my fridge with my first set of milkweed seeds... preparing them for sowing with a month of cold stratification. I am planning to give the seedlings out to neighbors this Spring. Anyone wishing to do the same can buy some seeds here: https://www.rareseeds.com/milkweed-butterfly-weed/ https://www.rareseeds.com/milkweed-butterfly-weed/
- mark-r 8y agoIt turns out there are many varieties of milkweeds. The one I'm familiar with here in the midwest is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias_syriaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias_syriaca
- artursapek 8y agoThe one I linked supposedly does well in CO, where I live.
- eigenstuff 8y agoI'm planning to do the same (so thanks for the link!) in addition to roping off the wild patches of milkweed in our hay fields so they don't get mowed by the farmer we lease our land to. I'll add on to this, if anybody out there is interested, join the monarch waystation network! I got my waystation certificate in the mail a few weeks ago. https://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/ https://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/
- throwaway5752 8y agoNo, definitely not a dupe. This is a specific update in the context of a general trend.
- jobbagy 8y agoFYI: Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-collapse-we-are-destroying-our-life-support-systems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-c...
- Eric_WVGG 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago“The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a nonprofit group that conducts a yearly census of the western monarch, said the population reached historic lows in 2018, an estimated 86 percent decline from the previous year. That in itself would be troubling news. But, combined with a 97 percent decline in the total population since the 1980s, this year’s count is ‘potentially catastrophic,’ according to the biologist Emma Pelton.” That’s the hard bit for me. What are we doing to this planet? What will it become? The monarchs are a blessing of a creature. Will we just watch them wither away? Can we escape our petty dramatized politics and think of what we are passing on to future generations? Not just high tech benefits, but mountains of plastics for packaging, toys, and many “novelties” that are useless except for cheap thrills. So while many will say our system has brought great wealth for humans, it’s important to think about which humans have seen wealth and which have seen further destruction. And what species and vistas all of humanity lost to gain our treasures. Those too have a cost, but not much that any of us will have to bear. The cost is paid by someone else we’ve never met or who may never be born yet. But sometimes, stories like this remind us of the great damage we are doing to this Earth.
- blitmap 8y agoTomorrowland is the Disney movie I have enjoyed most in my life.
- Leader2light 8y agoNever saw it, meh reviews online.
- ataturk 8y agoHey, you're the ones with the open borders and all that SJW shit. We told you not to do it, but Kali did it anyways. Just wait until full-on big "C" Communism hits the US--the commies were and are the WORST when it comes to environmental protection. The Soviets dumped radioactive waste anywhere they pleased. This is what it looks like when regular people have NO CONTROL over anything. It sucks and will continue to suck until the revolution and its natural population control. There is no fixing this short of cutting world population in half at the least.
- artursapek 8y agoNot that we're not ruining this planet, but these specific monarch statistics might not be showing the full picture: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/adiku0/monarch_butterfly_numbers_plummet_86_percent_in/edhafdd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/adiku0/monarch_butter...
- djsumdog 8y agoI've seen articles like this posted elsewhere and I've also seen scientist chime in and be critical of the numbers posted, showing problems with the methodology. I'm surprised I can't find many threads talking about the actual data in this post.
- rconti 8y agoI visited the Pacific Grove butterfly sanctuary each of the past couple of years. It's really amazing. This year (2018), the count was way down, but they were saying (hoping) it was a bit too early in the season yet. I guess not :-/
- malchow 8y agoDrain Lake Lag, reroute water pipelines, stop controlled burns, raise the gas tax, and float a special bond. We’ll save you, butterflies!
- janvdberg 8y agoIs this one of those things where, in 50 years time, people will say: "how did they not know" or "why didn't they do anything!"
- babyslothzoo 8y agoIt's likely that all matters of unsustainable behavior will eventually be looked upon that way by a more enlightened future. Unless we continue to dumb ourselves down with misinformation, willful ignorance, and the banishment of uncomfortable/unpopular ideas, of course.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThat's assuming there's much of a future, enlightened or otherwise.
- babyslothzoo 8y agoTrue. And I think there's a strong argument to be made that humans will destroy themselves before getting there.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoYes, of course. We've spiked CO2 levels like crazy. We've slathered our farms, our lawns, our houses with organophosphates and neonicotinoids. And still we think that these things are small problems requiring maybe some little incremental tweak here and there to fix. Bug populations have cratered across the US in the last 20-30 years and this has received only the slightest bit of attention and almost no press coverage. That has a wide ranging impact on the entire ecosystem and is just one tiny aspect of how we're changing the world. We are basically just children refusing to accept even the most basic levels of responsibility and stewardship for the world we live in.
- crushcrashcrush 8y agoI grew up in the East Bay, directly across from a regional park - Ardenwood Historic Farm. Used to see giant eucalyptus positively twitching alive with Monarchs. Haven't seen a single one this year since I've been visiting my mother who still lives in the neighborhood.
- stefan_ 8y agoLong before humans ever roamed this planet species went extinct with regularity. Why should we care about the California Monarch Butterfly in particular? Because they look beautiful, to human eyes anyway? Ever since we know about evolution, we realize that the whole concept of enumerating species is a mostly pointless, sisyphean task that originated in a religious fervor of documenting Gods creation. Focusing on specific species without any particular systemic issue in mind is little more than a throwback to the dark ages of science.
- babarock 8y agoCame here to ask this exact question, with honesty and real desire to understand. Millions of species are extinct daily. Why does this one matter? Because the NYT wrote an article about it? Unfortunately all you got is a slew of downvotes and condescending patronizing answers scolding you on the negative impact humans have on the environment... Ugh. Sometimes I wish people would reply to the question instead of fighting implied political agendas they see everywhere.
- titzer 8y agoBecause it looks like we are in the early stages of a mass extinction event caused by us. The extinction rate today is 100 to 1000 times higher than geological norms. Loss of biodiversity (i.e. individual species dying out) makes the entire system less stable, since remaining species are less adapted to the environment. In the extreme, even if the individuals of a species, e.g. a particular breed of ant are displaced by another species, the system moves closer to a monoculture, which is prone to population shocks and other chaotic behavior. Ultimately, all of Earth's ecosystems are connected through a vastly complicated food web. Even us. We've been blowing holes in that food web, roasting it, setting it fire, chopping off limbs, eradicating the places where it grows, etc. This is actually very, very bad. Asking questions is fine! It's great. It's how we learn. But cavalier comments like the OP are downvoted not because they are asking serious questions, but for stinking of militant ignorance.
- babarock 8y ago
- lcfcjs2 8y agoThanks Trump
- drugme 8y agoUtterly terrifying.
- iaw 8y ago> Gardeners, for one, can plant milkweed to support the surviving monarchs. And towns could help local habitats thrive by planting new trees now so that in 20 years, generations of monarchs have new places to winter. Highlighting this for anyone that didn't catch it in the article. Edit: Link to artursapek's comment on a seed supplier (in this thread but buried under a low voted parent) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18912699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18912699
- kevmo 8y agoTL;DR Do your part and plant some plants, people.
- threatofrain 8y agoI'm surprised there aren't collective coordination apps for things like this.
- ecshafer 8y agoMeetup.com probably has groups for those sort of things.
- threatofrain 8y agoI thought Meetup is more so for physical meetings.
- rch 8y agoI'm finding that libraries in Colorado and upstate NY are receptive to playing an expanded role. It turns out that providing seeds one may 'check out' for a season, and maintaining gardens of native plants as a teaching platform is generally compatible with their traditional role as stewards of knowledge.
- bg4 8y agoHope to one day buy a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere Texas and blanket it in milkweed and other supporting plants.
- bloomingfractal 8y agoIMHO, there's no point in individual action, we need collective political action in the form of massive government intervention, pretty much like in a total war economy. The free market clearly has failed here: - Carbon tax. - Carbon tariffs. - Expropriation of all oil fields, the oil has to stay in the ground. - Criminal prosecution of executives and shareholders of Oil companies much like what should have happened to the Tobacco industry. - Job program (right to employment) to re-train the workforce in green technologies, specially in areas that will be affected by the aforementioned measures.
- rossdavidh 8y agoProbably true, but individual action is a way of stating, "I will do this much without the government, so obviously I support collective action". Also if, say, the government is engaged in genocide, a change in government policy is certainly called for, but you should still shelter/hide individuals that come your way, as best you can. Not usually comfortable with bringing genocide into a discussion about political theory, since it rarely adds understanding to the discussion, but in this case it seems literally to be the most apt analogy.
- bloomingfractal 8y agoAgreed. To rephrase, I just think that people spend too much time arguing what they can do on an individual/moral level (i.e. veganism, etc) and too little time discussing political solutions, and I believe this is mostly a political issue. I do feel guilty about my carbon footprint and have been trying to decrease it. For instance, I would love to not drive to work but there's simply not good public transportation where I live, what can I personally do about that? If, for instance, a corporation dumps toxic waste on a river because it's cheaper than the fines, what can I do about that besides political action?
- kaybe 8y agoCan you work from home once in a while? If you do it one day every 2 weeks you saved 1/10 of commute energy just like that.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI'd like to discuss how this fits into the broader context and ask some stupid questions. In attempt to quell some downvotes, let me state upfront that I'm fully convinced climate change is real, human-caused, should be reversed even if the cost is very great, etc. That said, articles like this frustrate me because I don't think they provide enough context for why we should care. Literally no one I know is going to give up their creature comforts of smartphones, electric lighting, driving the car they want to drive, eating meat, having kids, A/C, commercial air travel, etc. just to save a species of butterfly. What's the ultimate consequence if Monarch butterflies no longer exist? Is it just early warning of other bad things? What are those things? And the big question that I don't see answered much: if we lose a bunch of species to climate change before we get our act together, why does that ultimately matter? Is it just sad? Is it that we don't know what will happen if things start changing really rapidly? What could happen in the worst case scenario? Wikipedia lists [1] a bunch of North American species that have gone extinct in the past 1500 years. I'm surprised by how short the lists are, and how few there are in the past decade. And no one seems to care about these species...I don't know anyone lamenting the loss of the Eelgrass limpet or the Ash Meadows killifish. I'm very pessimistic about our ability to get a handle on climate change in the next 50 years. Our civilization is not built for this challenge. I hope I'm wrong though. But at the same time, I'm very optimistic about the biosphere for the next 1000 years. We'll switch to renewables or fusion, probably do large-scale geoengineering to correct some damage, and we'll adjust as a species. That doesn't mean hundreds of millions or even billions of people won't suffer and die in the transition. We absolutely should fix it before hand if we can. But the people claiming that humans will be extinct in 50 years because of climate change are completely out of their minds. It sounds like a religious argument to me, not one based on the science. Humans are cockroaches; we're not going anywhere unless an asteroid hits the earth. And it completely undermines the rational case to be made for why we should address climate change. On the non-human front, a lot of plants and animals will either go extinct or almost go extinct but then most populations will recover. Our descendants mostly won't care about the species we lost, just like we don't care now about the "missing" species we lost a long time ago. We may even figure out ways to revive extinct species. But I'm not a biologist or climate scientist, so I may be completely wrong. Don't tell me why I should be alarmed, because I already am. Tell me why people who don't care about butterflies should be terrified about the prospect of them disappearing. And whatever that story is, start telling it more, and connecting the butterfly story to it more, because otherwise it's just noise.
- bmurphy1976 8y agoI'd really like to know how fireflies/lightning bugs have been impacted. It's anecdotal, but it seems to me there has been a precipitous fall in their populations as well here in the midwest. I remember childhood evenings filled with them, they were everywhere, our grass was constantly crawling with them during the day. Now, I rarely ever see any during the day and at night I can count all the flashes. It's not all my imagination. My cousin lives next to a farm. They have a couple acres they turned into a natural prairie. You can see the difference, the prairie lights up with activity at night, the farm is dead. A flash here or there is all you can see. Absolute stark contrast to the farm fields and well manicured laws of their neighbors. EDIT: I found a link: https://www.firefly.org/why-are-fireflies-disappearing.html https://www.firefly.org/why-are-fireflies-disappearing.html
- christophilus 8y agoMy brother’s yard and mine positively swarm with fireflies. More than I remember as a child. It’s because we don’t mow our yards much, and we allow large patches of wild local prairie like plants. Our neighboring yards have almost no insect life at all. So yes, our obsession with trim, grass lawns is a big problem.
- bmurphy1976 8y agoThe weird thing is I grew up in a neighborhood with obsessively trimmed grass. There was still no shortage of fireflies 30 years ago. While our monoculture lawns are certainly part of the problem, it seems there's more to it than that. They are losing on multiple fronts including our chemical warfare on the local environment and various climate change related issues.
- geerlingguy 8y agoWe used to have them every few feet when I was a kid (enough that any given night we could catch a few in a jar, observe, then release), but some nights I see maybe one or two in an entire night. My kids don't know the joy of playing with lightning bugs that I knew :(
- kemiller 8y agoI'm wondering if the fires may have had an impact. We found one during the hazy days that wasn't really moving and nursed it back to health before returning it to the wild after the smoke cleared. I know butterflies have only a limited time in that form but I like to think it made it.
- TheSwordsman 8y agoWe are so fucked...
- scoopdewoop 8y agoThis is so sad to hear. I lived in Pacific Grove as a child about 18 years ago. The monarchs would cover trees and entire yards, turning them bright orange. It was the closest thing that we had to seasons. To be 27 and realizing that this natural wonder could already be a thing of the past is heartbreaking.
- ourmandave 8y agoOh thanks, California. Now I have to rewrite the setting of my time travelling novel because there's no more butterflies.
- notjustanymike 8y agoThe butterflies are dying is definitely the start of a disaster / apocalypse movie.
- calebm 8y agoI've been suspicious of things like Roundup weed killer for a while. Over the last several years, I've stopped using residential weed killers on my property, and I have noticed a little uptick in monarchs and fireflies recently. Of course, it's more annoying keeping your yard looking immaculate without those chemicals - you have to pull weeds more, but it's not really that big of a deal. The "easy" path often has its downsides.
- chmaynard 8y agoDon't try to make the land around your home "immaculate". Suburban lawns are a terrible idea, especially in the Western US. Diverse plant communities are much more attractive and hospitable to wildlife.
- hi41 8y agoI heard an interview where the scientist said that we need to stop mowing our lawns. This will help the butterfly and bee population to thrive. We need to change our township laws so that we can do that. That is a tough challenge but something we can achieve if we work together.
- cwkoss 8y agoI don't think grasses, even tall ones, are particularly useful for butterflies and bees. I think you may find it more effective to create some some mulched areas for growing wildflowers and perennials like milkweed. Mowed lawns are silly and ecologically destructive for several reasons, but I think re:insects its more about habitat loss than any properties of the lawn itself.
- ip26 8y agoWildflowers and perennials and so forth are by far the best- but my small lawn, ringed by native xeriscape, is significantly more "alive" with grasshoppers, insects, and spiders when it's long than when I mow it. Sample size of one.
- cwkoss 8y agoSounds nice! Yeah, I probably should have said pollenating insects don't get so much benefit from long grass. I've also heard that 'edges' of ecosystems tend to be the most productive (as it gets the interaction between two ecologies). Your xeriscape is probably making your grass ecosystem healthier too.
- hi41 8y agoIt was noted in the interview that tall grass and wild flowers that grow with it help the bees.
- mac01021 8y agoAn unmown, unmanicured lawn, will have a much larger variety of weeds, plants, flowers, etc. I bet that, after some time, the density of ecologicially-good stuff that sprouts up will be much greater than what you'd get in a manually maintained mulch patch.
- herf 8y agoThis article says rising CO2 is making milkweed toxic, and as everyone knows we are killing milkweed (as "weed") - with a billion stems needed to fix the problem: https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/animals/2018/12/monarch-butterflies-risk-extinction-climate-change https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/publ...
- esemor 8y agoAt the same time the global oil subsidies was close to a trillion dollars in 2018. If only that was spent else where...
- mac01021 8y agoWhere did you find this fact? I would like to find it too.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoMaybe numbers are down because it has an image problem? Monarchs haven't been popular for a while now, perhaps try renaming it to Democrat Butterfly?
- tabtab 8y agoThe butterflies told a reporter that the "rent is too high in California".
- bryan11 8y agoI planted butterfly bushes and milkweed to attract more butterflies in our area. After my city started spraying city-wide for mosquitoes, the butterflies and bees vanished.
- cronix 8y agoI'm curious about how many species that aren't visible to the naked eye are disappearing. Most of the species that we know are in decline are those that we can easily see and therefore easily notice. How about the microworld? Bacteria? Other things that are critical to the life-cycle?
- plussed_reader 8y agoLife requires the bio-mass to perpetuate; if people take up the share of all bio-mass in their bodies life finds a way to unlock and reuse that material. I'm guessing a new microorganism that will take the place of some of these depleting species. Or how about the bacteria that is able to break down plastic? We (still)have to worry about the various fungus that developed and transitioned the world out of the carboniferous period.