[leps-talk] Re: Big Oil, Chemical & Farm Machinery companies provide superb Monarch Butterfly Breeding Habitat

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

Paul, thank you for continuing to share your observations and insight re.
Monarchs. It appears that you are pointing out things that the _Big Enviro
Lobby_ does not want to know about or refuses to believe. I also continue to
admire your patience in dealing with the continued flow of unwarranted and
insulting personal attacks that come from people who should really be
debating the point in a more professional manner. (John, not picking on you
but the personal attacks on lepsl are what finally drove me off that
listserv). I have no problem with people throwing stones at faceless
companies and government organizations :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Cherubini [mailto:monarch at saber.net]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 5:21 AM
To: jshuey at tnc.org
Cc: leps-l at lists.yale.edu; TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [leps-talk] Re: Big Oil, Chemical & Farm Machinery companies
provide superb Monarch Butterfly Breeding Habitat


John Shuey wrote:

> Dr. Pleasants  must work in a land where round-up ready 
> crops don't dominate the landscape - say like the fantasy world 
> of Paul Cherunbini's brain.

> Round-up ready beans, 50% of the bean-corn rotation
> in the Midwest, insure that fields are virtually 
> weed-free - milkweeds included. 

Free of mature milkweeds, but not milkweed seedlings - the tender,
succulent plants ovipositing female monarchs prefer and the
most nutritious food for monarch caterpillars.

The reality is the area of the USA with the most abundant 
monarch population right now (and nearly every year in mid-summer)
is in western Minnesota.  Yet western Minnesota is precisely the 
same area of the USA with the highest concentration of Roundup
Ready soybeans, Bt. corn and herbicide resistant corn.

I found milkweed seedlings to be abundant within fields
of RR soybeans and Bt corn. Most of these seedlings contained
monarch eggs indicating gravid female monarchs are actively
laying eggs in these GMO crops. 

http://www.saber.net/~monarch/soybeansrreggs.jpg
http://www.saber.net/~monarch/soybeanfemale3.jpg

I think the point you do not understand is that these are 
milkweed SEEDLINGS.  In the fall, milkweed floss blowing
off mature milkweeds growing outside the crops is carried by the wind
into adjacent corn and soybean fields.  The following spring
these seeds sprout and grow well within the GMO crops.
Farmers apply Roundup only once or twice a season according
to Dr. John Pleasants and the Roundup typically only temporarily
injures the milkweed rather than kills it all.

So RR Soybeans will not eliminate common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
in soybean fields because milkweed seeds will continue
to be blown into these fields each fall and germinate the following
spring and alot of the seedlings will do well despite the one or two
Roundup treatments.  Besides, A. syriaca seeds germinate in a staggered
fashion so if some seedlings get hit hard by Roundup herbicide others
will be sprouting and never be exposed to Roundup.

Paul Cherubini

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