Bt corn turns out to be great monarch habitat

[Ron Gatrelle]

I ask this question. Why, the heck do some of you people rejoice so much,
or look so much for bad news? Or, like this winter's Monarch/logger scam,
create it?  (Yes sir, if you jumped on that bandwagon and help spread the
news (hoax) you were as much a part of that as the guy who drives the
get-away car is to the bank robbery. But then, that is the kind of fact
want-to jumps-to.) Since "they" are going to make this crap (Bt corn)
anyway - I would think it would be a real relief to find it only kills pigs
and people and not Monarchs!
It would be to me.
RG

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Quinn" <Mike.Quinn at tpwd.state.tx.us>
To: <dplex-l at raven.cc.ku.edu>
Cc: <Leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 11:28 PM
Subject: RE: Bt corn turns out to be great monarch habitat


> One relevant quote you neglected to include: "The researchers stress,
> however, that their results are preliminary and still under review by
other
> experts."
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul Cherubini [mailto:monarch at saber.net]
> > Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 10:24 PM
> > To: dplex-l at raven.cc.ku.edu
> > Cc: Leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> > Subject: Bt corn turns out to be great monarch habitat
> >
> >
> > http://www.biotech-info.net/low_risk.html
> >
> > *  Comparisons of butterfly survival in conventional cornfields and
> > in plots of GM corn turned up no significant differences in Minnesota,
> > Iowa, Maryland, Michigan and southern Ontario.
> >
> > *  the monarchs fared better at the edges of one Minnesota GM
> > cornfield than they did in a nearby wooded area, said William
> > Hutchison,
> > an entomologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
> >
> > *  the monarchs in the studies seemed to prefer cornfields to
> > other areas
> > for laying eggs.
> >
> > *  pollen rarely collected on milkweed leaves in lethal
> > concentrations what
> > did land on the leaves often was washed away by rain or blown
> > off by wind.
> > The concentrations found in the Iowa studies were too low to
> > impose even
> > minor effects on the monarchs, said Hellmich at Iowa State.
> >
> > * In one Minnesota study near Rosemount, researchers placed potted
> > milkweed plants at the edge of a cornfield, on a strip of soil around
> > the field and close to a nearby wooded area. They monitored
> > caterpillars
> > on the plants and found no significant differences between
> > those near Bt
> > and non-Bt corn, Hutchison said. But they were surprised to find that
> > more caterpillars died near the forest than near the corn.
> >
> > * in Maryland, researchers studied sweet corn, which generally is
> > heavily sprayed with synthetic insecticides as an alternative
> > to Bt corn.
> > They found the caterpillars quickly died in sprayed fields. But in
> > non-sprayed fields, there was no difference between Bt corn and the
> > conventional varieties, said Galen Dively of the University
> > of Maryland
> > in College Park.
> >
>
>
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