A sad sign of fall

[MadHound]

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. The air is crisp and clear, the leaves are falling, the smells, the sounds, it all adds up to my favorite time of year.

But now, fall has become a sad reminder of mankind's destruction of nature. The reason is there are hardly any monarch butterflies anymore.

Forty years ago, when I was a kid, I remember hordes of monarch butterflies passing through on their annual migration. These delicate insects, whose orange and black wingspan just about cover a child's hand, would undertake a migration of thousands of miles. Their numbers were so great that people complained about having to wipe dead monarchs off of windshields and pick their bodies out of car grills. For two weeks the fall skies would be filled with these beautiful creatures, who would, once in awhile, deign to alight on the hand or shoulder of an awe struck child.

But their numbers have steadily declined since then, their population now under attack on two fronts. The first front is in their winter homeland, the pine and oak forests of the states of Michoacán and Mexico in Mexico. Here, despite the region being declared as a protected biosphere, the forests are being cut down to feed the lumber industry. This destruction of their habitat means that the monarchs are doomed. They can't simply find another forest, once these forests are destroyed, their home is gone.

The second reason that monarchs are dying out is due to our modern agricultural practices. Not only are they falling victim to pesticides and herbicides, but another player has taken the field against them, GM corn. Turns out that the pollen from Bt corn, which blows onto the milkweed that monarch caterpillars feed on is deadly to those caterpillars.

Thus, monarchs are under attack from two fronts. Which means that every fall is now a death watch for me. I keep my eye out in late September and early October, rejoicing with each monarch I see, mourning that each fall there are fewer and fewer to see. Last week, I saw two monarchs on my daily dog walk. This week, just one, a lone monarch who graced me with its presence, landing on my outstretched hand, staying there for a few moments and then moving on.

I wept, wept for all those butterflies I will never see again, wept for the days when monarchs would darken the sun. Wept that they will do so no longer. Wept that we are such horrible stewards of this planet.

[patrice]

1. K&R + Shared.

:( :( :(

[AngkorWot]

2. It's a terrible, terrible tragedy. I weep for our children, and are children's children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize#Effects_of_Bt_corn_on_nontarget_insects

[MadHound]

3. I weep for us, and for the animals we are killing wholesale. n/t

[Bloke 32]

4. We shall, as Americans phrase it, 'get ours.'

Nature has a history of eliminating non-contributory species.

[Earth_First]

5. Thank you for this...

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to take in a rare 40 knot north wind off the great lake, Lake Ontario.

The monarchs who weren't going to make it were plentiful on the shoreline as the 9-12 foot breakers crashed over their lethargic corpses.

[MadHound]

6. Nice to know that they're still plentiful somewhere,

Perhaps they are just late getting here:shrug:

[AmBlue]

7. My son loves to grow milkweed for the Monarchs...

...and lovingly tends them, watches over them as they move through metamorphosis. We should all go out of our way to convert as much of our little patches of earth back to mini-meadows, for the sake of the butterflies and the bees. And, of course, for our own selves and the future of this Earth.

[bvar22]

8. Not too long ago, they were plentiful in Minnesota .

I spent the Summer of 2004 photographing them, questing for in-flight photos.

We now live on their migration route in Arkansas,
and I have seen none this year.



There also seems to be fewer Hummingbirds.
Our "locals" have already departed for their migration,
but we traditionally leave our feeders up until mid-November
for those passing through.
We haven't seen any visitors over the last couple of weeks.

It is amazing that these fragile, delicate animals can endure the yearly migrations.

Have you seen the photos of the Winter Ground in Mexico?
They are mind boggling.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. OMG! I remember those days..of thousands and thousands of Monarch butterflies

flying across northern california in the 1960s. :-( Where did they go?

[lapislzi]

10. One flew into my windshield last weekend

I was driving quite fast. I felt terrible, just terrible, as bad as I would feel if I had run over a squirrel or other small animal.

And yes, I have noted that they are fewer in number.