Are Monarch Butterfly Populations Rising?

[stan & karen westfall]

On Thu, 04 Sep 1997 04:56:44 -0500, jbhicks at inlink.com (J. Brad Hicks)
wrote:

>I'm not a collector, or a professional, just somebody who thinks that
>butterflies are attractive, especially the big, boldly marked ones like the
>monarch. I remember being saddened when I read, years ago, that the monarch
>butterfly population was being threatened by loss of habitat. As a result,
>I started mentally keeping track of how often I've seen them in the St.
>Louis area during the summer.
>
>Now I'm sorry I didn't keep better records, because this has been a very
>unusual year for me.  For about the past ten years, my average number of
>sightings for this species has been around two to five per year. This year,
>I've seen them on seven separate occasions; two of those times, I saw two
>at a time, and one time even looked to my uneducated eye like a mating
>flight.
>
>I do not take any active steps to summon or attract them, and other than
>mowing the lawn less often this year than on average, I can't think of any
>reason why I'd suddenly see two or three times as many of them. Heck, this
>is almost consistent with my vague memories of monarch butterfly presence
>during my childhood in the late 1960s.
>
>So, does anybody know if there been a monarch butterfly population
>explosion, or has this just been an odd year for me?
>
>--
>J. Brad Hicks  mailto:jbhicks at inlink.com
>Web Page: http://www.inlink.com/~jbhicks
>PGP keyserver:    http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu

   I am not a scientist or professional  either but an avid butterfly
gardener and photographer. It is hard for me to comment on the monarch
population in this area as this is my first full season at my new
place in NC. However, I did have  some monarchs do a massive egg
laying on my white butterfly weed. They laid so many eggs that I
raised about 50 caterpillars and left at least twice that many on my
plants.

   In fact, they totally devoured all the foliage off of these 5
plants. Luckily, by the time the foliage was gone, all of the
caterpillars were large enough to form their pupas.

   If you would like to see the photos I took of my monarch "babies",
feel free to check out my ,"Nature's Flightline" link below. Enjoy
your butterfly watching!

For photos of Flowers, Butterflies , Songbirds and Hummingbirds, visit the
following sites:
Nature's Flightline - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/7289
Gardenlife - http://www.angelfire.com/nc/gardenlife/index.html
Slices of Nature - http://homepage.usr.com/b/brdlvr
Our personal homepage - http://members.wbs.net/homepages/b/r/d/brdlvr.html

Stan Westfall
rockyboy at coastalnet.com