Please Help the World's Rarest Butterfly

Pierre A Plauzoles plauzolesp at bigvalley.net
Sat Jul 29 23:13:51 EDT 2000


Paul Cherubini wrote:

> Pierre A Plauzoles wrote:
>
> > What he found is in absolutely total
> > contradiction to your assumption that butterflies can coexist to
> > any real degree with intense human activity.
>
> What specific human activities (if any) did the Los Angeles
> entomologist find were linked to the species' declines?
>
> 20 years ago conservationists arbitrarily blamed butterfly declines on
> air pollution, DDT and urban sprawl. But when ecologists started investigating
> the full range of possible causes they sometimes arrived at far different
> conclusions.This is what happened in the case of the Bay Checkerspot butterfly.
> Stuart Weiss found that many grasses and non-native plants
> introduced to California in the 1800's have had a dramatic negative
> impact on the abundance of native plants this butterfly needs. Thus the
> conservationists were mistaken in attributing the decline of this
> butterfly solely smog, pesticides and sprawl. Spending $100 million dollars on
> a 1000 acre preserve for this butterfly would not have done it any good.

He noted several causes.  Notable among them were 1/ the increse in land
development at the expense of prime habitat, 2/ the use of pestiicdes (many, if not
most, are not really as selective in the real world in what they kill or
incapacitate as the labels claim, which is based on what the development teams did
in their labs), 3/ removal of native plants and replacement by exotics (especially
exotics chosen specifically for their non-use by caterpillars [Note here that he
was studying butterflies, hence the concentration on them], 4/ air pollution
(emissions from burnt fossil fuels -- be they from stationary or mobile sources,
point sources or not, the gases still can cause problems-- and from other
processes, such as manufacturing),

I don't know how it is in northern California or other parts of the country, let
alone Mexico or Canada, but here there are many plants in nurseries whose labels
(and descriptions in Sunset's Wester Garden Book) specically state whether a plant
is likely to attract insects or not.  I have even come across a description of
members of the parsley family that bemoaning the fact that the more certain
umbellifers are modified for attractiveness to humans, the more caterpillars find
them attractive!  My reaction is simple: if we can't share a little of our
resources with the other species on this planet, there is something seriously wrong
with us.  Most people call this fault greed, selfishness or avarice. (or some
variation thereof).

Pierre A Plauzoles
sphinxangelorum at bigfoot.com



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