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Monarch butterfly population in California spirals to another record low
- eggsmediumrare 6y agoLawns are so, so very stupid. What an awful waste of land. You can get milkweed seeds very easily. I highly encourage you to do so, and other native wildflowers.
- roflchoppa 6y agoAh thanks for reminding me, I bought a load of milkweed seeds and threw them in the fridge back in November. I’ll start germinating them right now.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoPlease be careful where you sow milkweed..the plant contains and will leak latex ..this can cause skin burns/allergies and should get into eyes or mucus membranes. [..] Thick, milky latex (sap) is present in all parts of the plant. ... Common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, is native to North America and is one of the most important northern plants for the monarch butterfly. Monarch caterpillars and butterflies are bitter and poisonous to birds, due to a toxic alkaloid in the latex.[..] [..] Caution: Do not get milkweed sap in your eyes (such as rubbing your eyes after touching the sap); wash your hands thoroughly after handling the plant. Also, some people may develop an allergic reaction when the sap touches the skin.[..] And the welts and scars post latex exposure and dermal damage wont go away easily. It’s also painful.
- bsder 6y agoBe careful that it is the correct milkweed. Some species of milkweed don't have enough caloric content to feed the butterflies sufficiently for their migration and they die partway through the trip.
- fogihujy 6y agoAnd, once you get used to having wild flowers and herbs in your garden, regular lawns seem quite boring.
- fastball 6y agoMight be good to consider that this is your opinion and not necessarily objective fact.
- fogihujy 6y agoOf course! Stating the entertainment and/or artistic values of anything is voicing an opinion rather than stating a fact. I apologise if that wasn't clear from my previous post.
- eggsmediumrare 6y agoIt is an objective fact that lawns are an ecological catastrophe and we'd be better off minimizing them.
- 01100011 6y agoYes, but if you plant milkweed, please consider planting one that is native to your area. A list of CA native milkweeds: https://calscape.org/loc-California/Milkweed%20(all)/vw-list/np-0#:~:text=Asclepias%20californica%20is%20a%20species,the%20foothills%20of%20the%20Sierras https://calscape.org/loc-California/Milkweed%20(all)/vw-list....
- vharuck 6y agoFor Pennsylvanians, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has a nice PDF listing native plants by type of site (sunny/dark, dry/most) and some notes for each plant (preferred soil type, if they're used by pollinators, etc.): http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cs/groups/public/documents/document/DCNR_20031352.pdf http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cs/groups/public/documents/docum...
- therealdrag0 6y agoWhat an awesome website. Lots of good information well laid out.
- jonny383 6y agoWhat an idiotic comment. Lawns are stupid? What about the roads you drive along daily? Or the car parks you park in? Or the gigantic concrete buildings you work in? Lawns are very obviously the least of society's concerns.
- BlargMcLarg 6y agoThere are quite a few people claiming the opposite, actually. Large squares of regularly trimmed, flat grass only to show one's decadence isn't exactly the same as a road used daily. If they were at least used for playing children, that would be one thing, but most front lawns are large spaces not designed for any purpose beyond aesthetics, and many back lawns have similar structures. It is almost devoid of life thanks to the lack of protection from the sun combined with the lack of diversity in vegetation, just so someone can show off their property.
- TheGrassyKnoll 6y agoThen I'll add to the idiocy. I think fake lawns are stupid. (/opinion)
- killtimeatwork 6y agoLawns are a big waste of potential. What could be a thriving ecosystem is basically an eco-wasteland. I would not be surprised if they were originally popular with aristocracy precisely because how stupid and useless they were (a Veblen good, signaling that the owner is rich enough to afford such stupidity).
- CalRobert 6y agoHonestly, those things are pretty stupid too. Car dependency, enabled through incorrectly priced roads that don't account for externalities, is one of the greatest drivers of climate collapse, and production of cement to make concrete is one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions.
- eggsmediumrare 6y agoThose are all bad too. It's idiotic to think this makes lawns less of a problem.
- pjc50 6y agoLawns are an ornamental form of pasture that belong in rainy, temperate climes, and absolutely not in California any more than golf courses in Gulf states.
- mint2 6y agoDon’t get me started. And hoa’s and new housing dev or all apartment complexes have contractually mandated Macdonald’s-ified landscape that makes it all look like censored. All in the name the “MaXimIZe PropErtY vAlUEs!!” Scam. It’s a useless eyesore destroying the environment and cookie cutter McDonaldsification of the landscape doesn’t even maximize value. It looks like strip mall landscaping.
- doitLP 6y ago> federal officials declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation This really brought home how many species are going extinct: there’s literally a waiting list to be considered endangered. And these are often the charismatic ones we hear about. So incredibly sad.
- dang 6y agoWe changed the URL from https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/monarch-butterfly-population-moves-closer-extinction-75351089 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/monarch-butterfl... to the original source, which also doesn't have a noxious autoplaying video.
- mceoin 6y agoThanks Dang!
- MattGaiser 6y agoSomeone needs to do a study on government waiting lists. I was a government employee for a year and so many things just sit and rot in a pile waiting to be addressed. I sent a letter asking for info on a family member to the government archivist, and I am likely to get an answer in 2023 or 2024. When I was in government, I worked in parking management. We just kept generating an ever bigger backlog of images to process. Granted, neither of those are particularly high priority, but my point is that lagging government is a problem all over the place. There are probably many waiting lists like this species one which are causing substantial harm because nothing can get prompt attention.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> Someone needs to do a study on government waiting lists. I I'll spare you the time and money with my best guess of the conclusion of said study: In conclusion, Government tasks outweigh the potential output of Government employee expectations, therefore we the researchers recommend ever greater budget allotments and grants to further study why the adage 'more money' doesn't translate into more 'productive' outcomes in the Public Sector. The very essence of the State as a bureaucratic system ensures that things move as slow as possible, which often illicit the occasional Kill-dozer [0] event, even if you have someone motivated to 'change it from within' they inevitably get burned out due to the amount of red-tape and general sense of apathy. I highly recommend you watch the Wire and maybe even Treme (same producer) as it outlines anything I say way better than I could ever articulate in a 10,000 page essay on the matter. We really need to move past the nation-state model and limit its scope to as little as possible as that could at least allow for more viable solutions. I just heard you can print car tags at kiosks in grocery stores in CA, which is an example of simple and elegant solutions that were only made possible because the pandemic shut down so many government offices and thus allowed for these services to allotted to more sensible methods--they were not going to let such a massive amount of tax money slip through their hands so they moved fast before people simply disregarded it just as they did lock-down or stay at home orders, and sadly even mask wearing in certain cases. I waited nearly 5 months for my tags prior to this for my motorcycle in CA, only to see this outcome, which normally would have driven me up the wall but at least produced a reasonable over all solution. No one needs to be paid to hand out something you can automate, it makes no sense. Put those people to more sensible tasks like addressing liens or title transfers that are more nuanced and require actual Human intelligence (and I use the word loosely) or zoning approvals, or solar tie in approvals etc... to solve as there is a massive back log of those right now that can't move forward until some bureaucrat signs off on it. 0: https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoI wanted to have a hedgerow for monarch at my farm. I called it a Monarch Corridor. I was even ready to move my irrigation to facilitate it. I don’t know what Xerces is supposed to do but because I was leasing land from the water Dept and it was managed by a non profit, I had to go through them..I tried for three years, not a peep. I gave up and do what I can...but I know there is so much more that can be done. At this point, I think the environment is in the hands of private citizens. Don’t waste time getting it down through non profits or govt orgs. They exist for the care and feeding for their employees.
- Exmoor 6y agoA few years ago I started seeing anecdotal reports of greatly reduced numbers of insectivorous birds. I shrugged it off at the time, because a few anecdotes about missing Swallows is not data, but the anecdotes (and now data) have been piling up. There seems to be something seriously wrong with our insect populations that needs to be investigated immediately.
- jcims 6y agoThis is a huge bummer. I remember seeing monarch butterflies everywhere when i was a kid in northwest PA. It’s been years since I’ve seen one in the wild, although i did find some wild milkweed last year, might look into planting some along the woods on our land.
- samstave 6y agoWhen I grew up in Lake Tahoe in the 80s - near my elementary school, Monarchs would cover the near by trees in the THOUSANDS. HUGE populations. Apparently their primary food source is milkweed - which has been decimated due to pesticides. Monarchs take generations to migrate from mexico to america to eat, mate and rebuild their population, but humans have killed off their food source, milkweed, thinking of it as just a weed...
- CalRobert 6y agoThe first time my friends took me to see the monarchs a bit south of San Luis Obispo, I spent a minute or two wondering where they were. Then I looked more closely and realized the trees _were_ monarchs. Those weren't leaves - every single branch, surface, etc. was absolutely covered with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of butterflies. They were much bigger than I expected too. It was an awe-inspiring experience and if we ever get our act together and they're back, I encourage you to see them.
- kilroy123 6y agoSadly, I'm not surprised to hear this. When I went to visit the monarch butterflies in central Mexico, I was told that they're really struggling. It was a very beautiful sight to be seen. The surprising thing to me about these beautiful insects is how high up they live. I was at about ~10,000 feet and fairly out of breath walking up a big hill, but there they were hanging out in the trees. (tree line is higher in Mexico)
- kortilla 6y agoIs there a way to safely visit that location in Mexico though? I had heard that it’s not setup for tourism in a way that’s non-disruptive to the butterflies.
- carapace 6y agoI saw the Monarch migration once here in San Francisco. It was just magical. The air was filled with butterflies.
- cmpb 6y ago>An unusually high number of reports of late breeding and captive rearing near the coast—primarily on tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)—may also suggest there are higher numbers of non-migrating monarchs than usual which can negatively impact the population. Just a friendly reminder to milkweed enthusiasts to always use your local native milkweed instead of the exotics. They might attract more butterflies, but they're bad for the population because they spend more time later in the year on the exotics instead of migrating back for overwintering.
- bondolo 6y agoThis has been weird because I have seen more Monarchs this winter in Berkeley than in any prior year. Last Monday we counted 5 at one point. I know this is anecdotal and there is certainly a crisis but something is going on.
- LordHog 6y agoThe wife started trying raise Monarch butterflies this year. We bought a great deal of milkweed plants, about 25 pots. Every day she would tend to the milkweed then brings in any caterpillar or larva she finds. Throughout the last seven months the number one issue our Monarch population faced was the Tachinid flies. I don't know the exact number of larva eggs and caterpillars she brought into the house, but an educated guess would be around 250. The vast majority of the Monarch population was decimated by the Tachinid flies. I would say about 85% of them died as a result of the flies. Another cause we witness is when a caterpillar would expel green liquid then die. Still not sure the cause of them. Most info I could find pointed to toxins, like weed killer. We would wash the leaves after first reading about the toxins, but the caterpillars would still succumb. In the end, I think only about 20-25 were well enough to be released. It has been very disheartening to see so many of them die.