You Can Help

We all have a part to play in saving monarchs, which, ultimately, will help us save ourselves:

– Plant a garden without using pesticides or chemical fertilizers with mostly native plants, shrubs or trees.  Stand up and be counted as a pollinator protector by emailing mmjbutterfly@gmail.com and state your name and your town which will be added to www.pollinatorfriendlytowns.org website. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.  Thank you.  We can save our planet one garden at a time.

At the end of August 2014, The Center of Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety, along with the Xerces Society, and Dr. Lincoln Brower, one of the world’s leading monarch scientists, filed a petition to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to consider including monarch butterflies on the Endangered Species List.  The monarch population has declined by more than 90 percent in the last twenty years.

Why is this happening?  How could it be that the once ubiquitous monarch butterfly, inhabiting all parts of the U.S. and Southern Canada, is on the brink of extinction?  The following Press Release was sent out on August 27, 2014:

After you read the press release, would you considering helping?  There are a few easy ways to do that:

–  write the Director of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Dan Ashe, either by email from the website http://www.fws.gov (the email button is on the top right of the home page) or by snail mail:  USFWS, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.  Personal letters have impact. Please tell him what monarchs mean to you and what our pollinators mean to all of us.  Thank you.

–  sign a petition:  go to www.biologicaldiversity.org,  go to actions tab, and current campaigns, then to save monarchs where you can sign. The petition will be delivered to the USFWS.  Please do this NOW.  The USFWS will make a decision by the end of November 2014 if they will even consider studying whether monarch butterflies should be on the endangered species list.  Make your voice heard.  Thank you.

–  and, of course, I ask each of you to take responsibility for the little piece of earth upon which you stand.  Our planet gives us everything, so please take good care of her so that future generations can thrive.  Thank you.

PRESS RELEASE After 90 Percent Decline, Federal Protection Sought for Monarch Butterfly Genetically Engineered Crops Are Major Driver in Population Crash
WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety as co-lead petitioners joined by the Xerces Society and renowned monarch scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed a legal petition today to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for monarch butterflies, which have declined by more than 90 percent in under 20 years.During the same period it is estimated that these once-common iconic orange and black butterflies may have lost more than 165 million acres of habitat — an area about the size of Texas — including nearly a third of their summer breeding grounds.”Monarchs are in a deadly free fall and the threats they face are now so large in scale that Endangered Species Act protection is needed sooner rather than later, while there is still time to reverse the severe decline in the heart of their range,” said Lincoln Brower, preeminent monarch researcher and conservationist, who has been studying the species since 1954.”We’re at risk of losing a symbolic backyard beauty that has been part of the childhood of every generation of Americans,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The 90 percent drop in the monarch’s population is a loss so staggering that in human-population terms it would be like losing every living person in the United States except those in Florida and Ohio.”The butterfly’s dramatic decline is being driven by the widespread planting of genetically engineered crops in the Midwest, where most monarchs are born. The vast majority of genetically engineered crops are made to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, a uniquely potent killer of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food. The dramatic surge in Roundup use with Roundup Ready crops has virtually wiped out milkweed plants in midwestern corn and soybean fields.“The widespread decline of monarchs is driven by the massive spraying of herbicides on genetically engineered crops, which has virtually eliminated monarch habitat in cropland that dominates the Midwest landscape,” said Bill Freese, a Center for Food Safety science policy analyst. “Doing what is needed to protect monarchs will also benefit pollinators and other valuable insects, and thus safeguard our food supply.”Monarch butterflies are known for their spectacular multigenerational migration each year from Mexico to Canada and back. Found throughout the United States during summer months, in winter most monarchs from east of the Rockies converge in the mountains of central Mexico, where they form tight clusters on just a few acres of trees. Most monarchs west of the Rockies migrate to trees along the California coast to overwinter.The population has declined from a recorded high of approximately 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to only 35 million butterflies last winter, the lowest number ever recorded. The overall population shows a steep and statistically significant decline of 90 percent over 20 years. In addition to herbicide use with genetically engineered crops, monarchs are also threatened by global climate change, drought and heat waves, other pesticides, urban sprawl, and logging on their Mexican wintering grounds. Scientists have predicted that the monarch’s entire winter range in Mexico and large parts of its summer range in the states could become unsuitable due to changing temperatures and increased risk of drought, heat waves and severe storms. Monarchs need a very large population size to be resilient to threats from severe weather events and predation. Nearly half of the overwintering population in Mexico can be eaten by bird and mammal predators in any single winter; a single winter storm in 2002 killed an estimated 500 million monarchs — 14 times the size of the entire current population. “We need to take immediate action to protect the monarch so that it doesn’t become another tragic example of a widespread species being erased because we falsely assumed it was too common to become extinct,” said Sarina Jepsen, endangered species director at the Xerces Society. “2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, which was once so numerous no one would ever have believed it was at risk of extinction. History demonstrates that we cannot afford to be complacent about saving the monarch.” “The purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to protect species like the monarch, and protect them, now, before it’s too late,” said George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety. “We’ve provided FWS a legal and scientific blueprint of the urgently needed action here.” “The monarch is the canary in the cornfield, a harbinger of environmental change that we’ve brought about on such a broad scale that many species of pollinators are now at risk if we don’t take action to protect them,” said Brower, who has published hundreds of scientific studies on monarchs. The Fish and Wildlife Service must now issue a “90-day finding” on whether the petition warrants further review. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 775,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Center for Food Safety is a nonprofit, public interest organization with half a million members nationwide. CFS and its members are dedicated to protecting public health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and instead promoting sustainable alternatives. The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in 1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs.

–  write the Director of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Dan Ashe, either by email from the website www.fws.gov (the email button is on the top right of the home page) or by snail mail:  USFWS, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.  Personal letters have impact. Please tell him what monarchs mean to you and what our pollinators mean to all of us.  Thank you.

–  sign a petition:  go to www.biologicaldiversity.org,  go to actions tab, and current campaigns, then to save monarchs where you can sign. The petition will be delivered to the USFWS.  Please do this NOW.  The USFWS will make a decision by the end of November 2014 if they will even consider studying whether monarch butterflies should be on the endangered species list.  Make your voice heard.  Thank you.

–  and, of course, I ask each of you to take responsibility for the little piece of earth upon which you stand.  Our planet gives us everything, so please take good care of her so that future generations can thrive.  Thank you.

–  Become informed.  Each One, Teach One.  We can save our planet one garden at a time.

–  and, of course, I ask each of you to take responsibility for the little piece of earth upon which you stand.  Our planet gives us everything, so please take good care of her so that future generations can thrive.  Thank you.

Can you imagine a world without butterflies & bees & hummingbirds & songbirds & frogs & bats and all creatures great and small in this beautiful tapestry of life?  Please write TODAY – you have until the end of November to submit comments on this phase of their consideration, so don’t procrastinate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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