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My anecdotal experience of the decline is this: My parents have a property in Southern California and when I was a kid, there was a period every where Monarchs
by DistractionRect 3y ago
My anecdotal experience of the decline is this:
My parents have a property in Southern California and when I was a kid, there was a period every where Monarchs would glide over the property like a waterfall (the backyard is at the bottom of a reasonably steep granite hill). It was truly a site to behold.
Every year, there were fewer. There was a small uptick during covid. This year, they saw their first one yesterday.
Over a 20 year span, it's just plummeted from hundreds (maybe thousands? It's soo long ago, I fail estimate the magnitude with certainty) to near zero.
It's depressing, and a harrowing look at the future may hold.
- labster 3y agoWhile I agree with you that there’s little to no hope for the future, I pretty easily got monarch butterflies in my back yard by planting some milkweed. Insect populations can recover very fast. Honestly the reduction in non-human apex predators is a much more long-term problem.
- stevenwoo 3y agoThere's a little hope, they overwinter in Mexico, and there one can still count them in the millions (the just aired episode 6 of the latest Planet Earth III series shows trees covered in them in a forest full of them, the caveat being recent more extreme winter storms can kill 75% of the almost dormant monarchs), though we don't know what the minimum viable population for them is.
- candiddevmike 3y agoIMO, the worst part is that decline probably can't be attributed to global warming, which will have even worse knock on effects for insects due to heat and draught. They're just going to jump from one human made disaster to another.