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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!
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...
they're old. they went to florida.
.. ow ... wait ...
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.
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.
Our planetwide ecosystem is collapsing
In America it's improved dramatically. Remember when rivers actually used to catch fire? Our air quality is so much better than it used to be, we used to pump so much lead into the air that it caused mental problems.
There are some issues in the developing world, but overall they've learned to move through the developing phase much more cleanly than we did (of course, they learned lessons from our mistakes, which is a good thing).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
So then why is it that California is 12% of the population of the whole US, and yet 25% of the homeless population lives there?
Because the weather is nice?
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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.
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.