[Leps-l] New Regional Monarch Nectar Plant Guides Now Available

[Paul Cherubini]

> Candace Fallon wrote:
> 
> Monarchs are in decline across North America. With milkweed
> loss in the east identified as a major contributing factor to this
> decline, Yet while restoring the millions of milkweed plants that
> have been lost is certainly an important strategy, monarchs 
> need nectar to fuel them during spring migration and breeding and to
> build up stores of fat which sustain them during fall migration and winter.

Important strategy to accomplish what?  Stabilize the milkweed plant &
monarch population decline? Reverse the decline?   Xerces doesn’t 
specify, but instead talks in vague quantitative generalities like the 
effort will “help save the monarch migration”. 

An inconvenient truth is it's not ever going to be logistically feasible 
for monarch enthusiasts or scientists to conduct “annual milkweed 
and nectar plant patch/stem counts" on even a County, let alone 
Statewide, scale to obtain baseline plant stem abundance data.  
So because baseline abundance data will never be obtainable 
it will likewise never be possible for Xerces to tell us whether
the number of milkweed & nectar plant patches/stems is actually 
increasing over time.  

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.
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