[leps-talk] Why aren't Mexico's overwintering monarchs in the news yet this winter?

[Johnson, Kurt]

I have no problem with individual gripes against individual workers; they
will need to defend their own positions and I can't be responsible IF they
resort to hyperbole.  However, it still doesn't add up-- 35% increase in the
Monarch's returning to Mexico from a bumper year of good breeding weather up
north, still does not solve the problem of a circa 50% loss of available
forest land for overwintering in Mexico (esp. if there is not a wide
spectrum of ability for overwintering groups their to "shift" to alternative
Oyamel stands locally etc.) over the longer period.  Are you suggesting that
the maps showing this historical decline are ficticious?  The same
situations plays re: the Karner Blue at the Albany preserves-- the maps of
the longer term shrinkage of available habitat over the years-- and the
declination of those preserve population to as low as 500 individuals etc.
So, I guess I don't get the connection between the "good" bumper years up
north and the loss of available roosting habitat, not to mention the
thinning therein, vis-a-vis the freezing of individual Monarchs.  No one
denies that these storms have gone on for millenia; and no one denies that
current data of temperature gradients and thinning cannot easily be
"extrapolated" backwards into time as a crystal ball.    But, I suppose, to
be fair to Paul, there is hyperbole on both sides.  I can suppose, IF we
suppose, we might not have been able to save the vast migrating species of
North America (Passenger Pigeons, Carolina Parakeets, Bison etc.) but we
might have stopped it somewhere at midstream if sociological realities had
been different.  I mean we still haven't solve the legal problem of having
taken the Black Hills away from the Sioux illegally etc. at that same time
period (they rejected the settlement set down by the Supreme Court awhile
back, etc).  Of course, some argue that extinction doesn't matter anyway
since it has gone on for millenia as well.  I suppose at some point one has
to find an anchor, point of reference, point of entry etc.  Luckily in a
democracy (slightly in quotes, depending on how much money you have) we can
be free to throw some hyperbole around.  So, enough for this contribution.  

KURT

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Cherubini [mailto:monarch at saber.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 3:47 PM
To: Johnson, Kurt
Cc: 'leps-l at lists.yale.edu'; 'TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com'
Subject: Re: [leps-talk] Why aren't Mexico's overwintering monarchs in
the news yet this winter?


Johnson, Kurt wrote:
> 
> I finally read the rest of this original post by Paul.  We HAVE made 
> the good news of the last months available to many many people 
> over our less publically visible grass-roots network and yes, its true, 
> the major news media like the "negative" (as in everything in the news)
> and therefore don't often pickup the positive...a fact of life and 
>"journalism". 

Kurt, todays NY Times article quotes Dr. Karen Oberhauser:

"A bad winter followed by a bad spring could be
 catastrophic," said Dr. Karen Oberhauser, a monarch
 ecologist at the University of Minnesota.

Likewise,  last summer the public was bombarded with more 
worrisome doomsayer predictions from the scientists:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
SPRAY MAY IMPERIL MONARCH BUTTERFLY
By Julie Hauserman St. Petersburg Times, August 27, 2001

TALLAHASSEE--this year several U.S. butterfly researchers say the
massive monarch migration could face a threat here in the Florida
Panhandle where the state is aerial spraying an insecticide called
Dibrom to kill mosquitoes that can carry the West Nile virus.

"It could be devastating" said Karen Oberhauser an entomologist
 from the  University of Florida who has studied monarchs for 17 years.
"The migration is a key link in a chain. If something breaks that
chain -- like mosquito spray that's going to kill them -- there won't
be any monarchs to rebuild the population."

"Every bird watcher in Florida out to be screaming bloody murder"
said Chip Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas who
runs a Website called the Monarch Watch. "They are knocking out
much of the insect population that the migrating birds feed on."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
The public never gets to see graphs like this 
http://www.saber.net/~monarch/post.jpg that show that
despite the mosquito spraying in Florida this past summer, the Bt 
corn, the Roundup Ready soybeans, the urban sprawl, the global 
warming, etc. the monarch overwintering population in Mexico this
winter was 35% above normal and 3.34 times as large as 
last winter.

Thus, the public is gaining a distorted view that monarchs are in
decline. Are the reporters to blame?

Paul Cherubini
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