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

[Roger Kuhlman]

Paul that's not the point that some milkweed grows in some ditch in Washtenaw County. I know that and I would never claim the total absence of milkweeds in my county. The point is that a whole lot less milkweed grows in Washtenaw County grows in farmer fields now that most farmers have switched to GMO crops than the relatively recent past. Furthermore I see no reason why this trend would not be replicated elsewhere in the summer range of the Monarch in the central United States. I think you know this but that fact does not fit your political and personal agenda
 
Roger Kuhlman
Ann Arbor, Michigan

> 
> Roger Kuhlman wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Milkweed still routinely grows in the hundreds of thousands of
> miles worth of farm road ditches in the upper Midwest that border
> the GMO crops.  On Google Earth I quickly found some milkweed
> growing in a ditch in Washtnenaw county, Michigan where you live:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imagegainer.com_images_PaulCherubini_moorevillejpg.jpg&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=tVAKMFPe3UCcsMWUFXo0FeX0xe1JUAj77B74DAI3DKI&m=MBn10SGtIwIKff3F6rTFWHDvHbDYuWQTYccRgiBXVMk&s=kweaXrcRm7QF7OYFNvJHlXbIAuTnJOGksHQemicxMMw&e= 
> 
> So milkweed and monarchs remain common in the upper Midwest
> despite the fact that the milkweed that used to grow within the
> crop fields was killed off during the years of 2000-2007 when farmers
> gradually adopted GMO crops.
> 
> Since roughly 3-6 billion milkweed plants still grow in the northern
> and central portions of the USA and adjacent provinces of Canada
> and support a population of roughly 100 million monarchs, the
> eastern monarch migration is not hardly “critically imperiled”.
> 
> Paul Cherubini
> El Dorado, Calif.
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