Plant pest or biological control
Linda Rogers
llrogers at airmail.net
Fri Jun 16 14:49:31 EDT 2000
At 06:12 PM 6/16/2000 +0100, Anne Kilmer wrote:
. . . . "Monarchs, and other butterflies, are a crop now, though, reared by
countless butterfly farmers, and therefore under the aegis and auspices of
the USDA whether they are listed as pests or not."
Why do you say butterfly farmers are countless?
On what do you base this statement?
"Countless" sounds so dramatic, like there
are thousands of butterfly farmers and thus
a tremendous threat to the environment and
butterfly interests.
The only successful sales avenue for butterfly
breeders is the web, so it's easy to count the
farmers. Most have websites hosted by THE
BUTTERFLY WEBSITE, and the sponsors are easily
numbered. There are FIFTY U.S. sponsors listed
on The Butterfly Website. In addition to
those 50 breeders, if you do a keyword search
on the web, perhaps as many as ten more farmers
or companies will appear that are NOT on the
Butterfly Website. There are no more than ten
that are not listed on TBW. That's a whopping
total of about 60 farmers. Out of those 60,
most raise fewer than 1,500 butterflies per year
(each).
So, really the threat posed is really nil
when you think of the vast AREA of the U.S.
and the NUMBER OF BUTTERFLIES BEING RELEASED.
Not really a very big "crop" is it, when you
consider how big the "field" is.
As a note, the 50 butterfly breeders I know
are simply making money through the responsible
use of natural resources.
Linda Rogers
Butterfly Boutique
IBBA Member www.butterflybreeders.org
"There is a soul force in the Universe, which,
if we allow it, will flow through us
and produce miraculous results."
- Gandhi -
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