Slashdot Mirror
Monarch Butterfly Numbers Plummet 86 Percent In California (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The number of monarch butterflies turning up at California's overwintering sites has dropped by about 86 percent compared to only a year ago, according to the Xerces Society, which organizes a yearly count of the iconic creatures. That's bad news for a species whose numbers have already declined an estimated 97 percent since the 1980s. Each year, monarchs in the western United States migrate from inland areas to California's coastline to spend the winter, usually between September and February. Results from the count so far show that the number of monarchs at 97 California overwintering sites has dropped from around 148,000 in 2017 to just over 20,400 this year. Counts for dozens of other sites are still being tabulated, but the outlook is troubling.
What's causing the dramatic drop-off is somewhat of a mystery. Experts believe the decline is spurred by a confluence of unfortunate factors, including late rainy-season storms across California last March, the effects of the state's yearslong drought and the seemingly relentless onslaught of wildfires that have burned acres upon acres of habitat and at times choked the air with toxic smoke. The Thomas Fire last year burned almost 300,000 acres, including areas important for monarch breeding and migration. More recently, the Woolsey Fire damaged at least four monarch butterfly overwintering sites in the Malibu area, according to Lara Drizd, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura.
What's causing the dramatic drop-off is somewhat of a mystery. Experts believe the decline is spurred by a confluence of unfortunate factors, including late rainy-season storms across California last March, the effects of the state's yearslong drought and the seemingly relentless onslaught of wildfires that have burned acres upon acres of habitat and at times choked the air with toxic smoke. The Thomas Fire last year burned almost 300,000 acres, including areas important for monarch breeding and migration. More recently, the Woolsey Fire damaged at least four monarch butterfly overwintering sites in the Malibu area, according to Lara Drizd, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura.
"Name one ecosystem that is better off for having agriculture moved into it?" Toby Hemenway http://bit.ly/1pnapoW
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
They are cyclical and are related to milkweed availability. But given that milkweed is considered a noxious weed and often targeted for eradication, it damages the Monarch food cycle. Too bad that milkweed is on the weed management area list.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
to say this is just the latent greed of humans surpassing any "need" or freemarket advantage of having butterflies, stupid little things who cares right? Drink more RoundUp, Monsantoids.
It matters if they are just dead and gone, but are they? Are they just not going to CA for some reason?
https://blog.nwf.org/2018/03/m...
I've been allowing milkweeds to grow on my property since I bought it. I mow around them...
Maybe California should slow the human encroachment into their habitats. With people comes noise, pollution, abnormal lighting and invasive species.
And California should stop encouraging building in fire zones.
You just break out the same bullshit for climate change and anything else, "oh it's cyclical" - and then you leave off the critical factor that isn't cyclical, but in fact systemic over decades and entirely NOT cyclical nor linked to milkweed closely.
You're a known empty barrel.
Now the people can cross off a worthless species that has been preventing valuble development of infrastructure across the countrys.
97% + 86% = more than decimated.
Drive slow when driving through milkweed fields.
Buy cats to eat the birds, who eat the butterflies.
Liberals fucking this state up so bad that even the butterflies don't want to live here anymore...
Remember?
.. ow ... wait ...
He's a known entity. On the very first page of his comments at the bottom (maybe 2nd now, who knows) you can see him making an objectively shitty joke attempt about CA... He's just one of the Fox News faggots.
The actual point is where his head was conically squeezed during his formative years by his mother's oppressively tight conservative vagina, which always cried out for big black cock as he grew into a bitter racist faggot of no value.
His entire "point" if you can call it that is to make a shitty one-line dig at CA as if that furthers the cause of treasonous faggot nazi conservatism. There's no 'there' there.
Keep doing that great Trump advertising. Every single slashdot article. You know the saying - no such thing as bad publicity! For free, too. You're gonna help us come 2020. Terrific job, terrific. I'm sure he thanks you bigly.
Coming soon to a theater near you
". I’m sure if that mountain had commercial value they would have found a cheaper habitat to save." = you mean South San Francisco. It's the #1 most expensive peninsula on the planet barring man-made islands in Dubai.
So no, wrong, they couldn't have picked a more desirable residential sprawl area than San Bruno mountain, midway between unaffordable Silicon Valley and skyrocketing SF proper. http://www.mountainwatch.org/butterflies-and-wildlife/
It's not as if butterflies must travel through the air or rest in trees or anything obvious like that.
The cartel in Mexico is destroying the butterflies environment with the production of heroin, meth and other drug processing without regard to the damages to the local areas. Not to mention their allergy and suffering debilitating effects of marijuana smoke.
Massive fluctuations in the butterfly population are perfectly normal.
The link goes to a paper from 1974, and looks at data back into the 1950s. For example: "A population peak occurred in 1950 and 1951 followed by a marked reduction in numbers in 1952; by 1953 the populations had been reduced to such an extent that no over-night roosting colonies could be found in areas where they had previously occurred in thousands and only seven field specimens were collected throughout the entire summer period. "
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As an old fart who remembers when monarchs were commonplace, I can't help but feel sad for future generations who will never see their beauty. Young people now grow up in a world where NOT seeing monarchs is normal. That's part of the problem, right? The baseline for how the world is is shifting so it's hard for new generations to appreciate the effect human activity has had on the planet.
Our planetwide ecosystem is collapsing. It requires dramatic changes to how to handle ourselves. The current human population is simply too large and places too big a demand on our environment. It must be curbed, even if by drastic means such as forced sterilization. But people won't accept that because they don't realize how bad the current situation is. We are driving full speed into a brick wall and instead of applying the brakes, we are speeding up. We are doomed. Do what you like.
Seems the wall is working already.
Table-ized A.I.
I mean, come on. They’re Monarchs, most are going to be very conservative. You think they’re gonna feel welcome in California?
#DeleteChrome
Indeed. So it's just a case that the monarch's late reign was caused by late rain.
Keep doing that great Trump advertising. Every single slashdot article. You know the saying - no such thing as bad publicity! For free, too. You're gonna help us come 2020. Terrific job, terrific. I'm sure he thanks you bigly.
Will it even come to an election in 2020? Trump is already behaving like a Monarch so it should not become as a surprise if he dispenses with such tiresome theatre as elections and crowns himself on the White House lawn?
100% Offtopic? ... after I cleverly worked the word 'monarch' into the post, UNFAIR!!!! :-(
Rice fields are pretty great for ecosystems. They help migrating birds, for example, and walking through them you see all kinds of wildlife.
I don't think you understand the question or the meaning of the term ecosystem. Rice fields REPLACE a diverse and complicated ecosystem with a monoculture one. While that might benefit a few species, it's a net loss to the environment for the benefit of feeding humans. In most cases it doesn't matter too much until you get to the point where too much land has been purposed for farming and there is no food or other vital resources available to species that need that sort of ecosystem to survive. Monarch caterpillars depend on some rather specific plants to survive (namely milkweed) which humans treat as a pest and remove from farmland. So they get sprayed with insecticides and a critical food supply gets removed from the ecosystem.
Just because some species can coexist compatibly with human agriculture doesn't mean that it's "great for ecosystems". Quite the opposite in most cases.
"I'll get you for this Doctor Venture if it's the last thing I do!"
from leftists fucktards. Good job.
It's not even that they aren't in California; they aren't in the usual spot, which might be because the usual spot was burned in a wildfire. As far as we know, they are three miles from their usual spot.
Actually a study in 2015 correlated the decline of milkweed due to use of pesticides across the states. Milkweed is the only food source for the caterpillars of these butterflies. By the time of the study the population has already dropped 90 percent in 20 years and the species was considered to be put on the list of endangered animals. What this has to do with trump, I have no idea.
Something something The Venture Bros
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Blah blah trump blah blah
You are the problem. If you are unhappy, go do something in the real life about it, venting your shit over here will achieve absolutely nothing, just fills the comment section with uninformative and unrelated barfs
Pesticides.
It's probably Neonicotinoids. It's a poison that kills everything.
Get planting milkweed folks. The butterflies have had a rough time this past year in Cali, and the best way to help them is feeding them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually a study in 2015 correlated the decline of milkweed due to use of pesticides across the states. Milkweed is the only food source for the caterpillars of these butterflies. By the time of the study the population has already dropped 90 percent in 20 years and the species was considered to be put on the list of endangered animals. What this has to do with trump, I have no idea.
I planted some milkweed in our garden. It isn't a particularly attractive plant but it does attract monarch butterflies, which are very cool to have around. I don't think knowledge of monarchs loving milkweed is common enough, I had never heard of this until I was 32 years old.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
They probably got caught up in some Californian Equity Equation and were asked to leave in order to give opportunities to other butterflies.
What else is new?
I wish we could blame Trump for the sad state of education, but of course it is more the other way around...
I grew up in the S.F. Bay Area (East Bay) and remember those swarms of monarchs in the oak trees and hillsides in the 1980s. We also learned about milkweed in elementary school. Not only that it fed the butterflies, but that it was toxic and we should avoid ingesting it when playing around outdoors.
Got some lantanna in a flowerbed. It is swarming with butterflies when they bloom. I burn off the old growth each spring and it come right back.
CA is so messed up even the butterflies are leaving
They're just moving to a less consumer-adverse regions with lower tax rates in neighboring states like the rest of the enlightened former-Californians.
Even insects don't want to live in California.
I literally just went with my son to the Butterfly Preserve that's located in Goleta, near Isla Vista (think UCSB). No butterfly sightings. The flowers were not in bloom.
Let's hope people realize milkweed has a purpose, just as mixed crops in farms and hedgerows are what sustain bees.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I used to see loads of monarch around in northern illinois and later in Northern Colorado. Over the last decade, I have noticed that they are no longer showing up.
In addition, here in Colorado, we have what are called Miller moths. 10 years ago, we would have 100s outside and 10s inside. Now, I hardly see any Millers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
These are Caliphornia butterflies. The majority of them probably have gender dysphoria and are transitioning - which may result in a population decline.
California carries everyone in the US. Maybe it's about time for the utterly worthless states, like Vermont, to start pulling their own weight.
Look up Doug Tallamy on youtube. He is an entomologist. He speaks about caterpillars and birds but his observations include monarchs as well. Just a bit of effort on the part of individuals can make a significant difference for wildlife.
Basically, roadside swaths of minimally managed ground are a thing of the past. The weed kill goes to the edge of the road. This results in the elimination of green bands of wild plants that used to stretch across all rural areas. So wildlife no longer has the ability to easily diffuse from one area to another. there is also just the gross loss of habitat from this change in farming. If individuals would plant a few select items in their yards and eliminate certain invasive exotic plants, then we can reestablish some habitat and more importantly allow breeding populations to easily migrate to different areas.