[Leps-l] New report about status of monarch butterflies in North America

[Roger Kuhlman]

It is my experience in Washtnenaw county (southeast Michigan) that Milkweeds have become far far scarcer since the farmers in the region have gone to GMO crops in their fields. The fields today are so much more neet, tidy and free of other plants than corn or soybeans. That was not true a few decades ago.
 
I find it hard to believe that similar results would not be found elsewhere in the Summer Monarch range.
 
Roger Kuhlman
 

> Matthew Shepherd @xerces.org> wrote:
> 
> > The eastern monarch population was assessed as “critically imperiled”
> > ldue to recent rapid decline and widespread threats. 
> 
> Far from being “critically imperiled” due to GMO crops, eastern
> migratory monarchs can still be filmed by the hundreds in numerous 
> GMO farmland habitats across the upper Midwest, including Iowa,
> Minnesota, the Dakotas, as so forth.
> 
> Example: Lamberton, Minnesota is in the heart of the GMO crop 
> farmland of south-central Minnesota and last September 
> Univ. of Minn. employees shot this video of hundreds of migratory
> monarchs gathered adjacent crop fields: 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3D32usE8vikxA&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=tVAKMFPe3UCcsMWUFXo0FeX0xe1JUAj77B74DAI3DKI&m=jK9WjHHvMY40bTP5b4l0FG9WAMKcWDydoEw4YPI1960&s=3n5E7eM34Hqrkqav0TzDgvN_8Dvv8TraiSCEBIsZAtc&e=  
> 
> Some GMO crop farmers in the upper Midwest are themselves 
> posting photos of large gatherings of monarchs on their farm 
> property like this South Dakota farmer did on Sept. 4, 2014: 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.learner.org_cgi-2Dbin_jnorth_jn-2Dquery-2Dbyday-3F1409942868&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=tVAKMFPe3UCcsMWUFXo0FeX0xe1JUAj77B74DAI3DKI&m=jK9WjHHvMY40bTP5b4l0FG9WAMKcWDydoEw4YPI1960&s=kJw8-aNBYtL9OSSbV8LWJzuxAxLoqD3iuUMSowVz0PE&e=  
> 
> Also, a billion+ milkweed plants still routinely grow in the 
> 500,000+ miles worth of the upper Midwest's mostly gravel 
> farm road ditches that border the GMO crops like this:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imagegainer.com_images_PaulCherubini_plummer.jpg&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=tVAKMFPe3UCcsMWUFXo0FeX0xe1JUAj77B74DAI3DKI&m=jK9WjHHvMY40bTP5b4l0FG9WAMKcWDydoEw4YPI1960&s=n2TXAJr4lEcInnpfA62aSaGdzezvO8n-8YeoKE7rVt0&e= 
> 
> Bees, wasps and other pollinators are also abundant in
> these gravel farm road ditches that border the Midwest’s
> GMO crops - look at how good the seed pod set is of these
> milkweed plants growing right on the edge of a crop
> fields in south-central Minnesota:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imagegainer.com_images_PaulCherubini_podspoll.jpg&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=tVAKMFPe3UCcsMWUFXo0FeX0xe1JUAj77B74DAI3DKI&m=jK9WjHHvMY40bTP5b4l0FG9WAMKcWDydoEw4YPI1960&s=v5G63_TnzxGedzgJ2Kshiz-UY-uVNgYyoWy17NB6Pn4&e= 
> 
> Paul Cherubini
> El Dorado, Calif.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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