U.S. Fish and Wildlife Decline to List Monarchs as Endangered Dec. 2020
As an eye witness to the dwindling monarch population over the past fifty years, it is sad, but not unexpected, that the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service declared, after years of deliberation, that the monarch butterfly was indeed endangered, but it was too expensive to do anything about it now. They will review it on a yearly basis. The multi-billion Monsanto/Bayer mega-business interests won the day.
In order to avoid monarchs being declared an endanger species, Monsanto has teamed with farmers to plant millions of milkweed, which withers with Round-up and no longer grows adjacent to corn fields. Iowa alone has lost 98% of its milkweed since the widespread use of mono-culture GMO crops.
When I first found the monarchs overwintering on Cerro Pelon in Mexico in early 1977 after a two month search, there were an estimated fifty million monarchs that year, but the numbers fluctuated. I have returned almost yearly since then; some years there would be more than 100 million monarchs, some years closer to 50 million. I camped among the monarchs in 1978 and 1979, for a full week each year exploring temples within temples of monarchs covering about 60 acres. However, when I visited in early 2014, there were three million monarchs on one acre.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/stop-spraying-pesticides?source=c.em.mt&r_by=1693432
The petition was successful in moving the NYCDEP to stop spraying an herbicide containing glyphosate around the reservoirs and 99 miles of roads it controls in in the Catskill area 2016.
Our once ubiquitous monarch butterfly is on the precipice of disappearing. Our bees are dying at the unsustainable rate of 30% a year. There are many contributing factors including widespread use of pesticides and herbicides by Big Agriculture and by individuals around their homes, loss of habitat, and climate change. It will take a concerted effort by individuals, communities, schools, libraries, towns, farmers, small and large corporations, cities, states and the federal government to participate in saving not only the monarchs, but all our pollinators. Without our pollinators we will lose at least half of our favorite food.
Every summer for the past thirty years, New York State has sprayed an herbicide containing glyphosate along our roadways, reservoirs and waterways. There are alternative and less expensive ways to address the issue of visible guardrails. The Tollway Authority of the state of Illinois is saving money by planting milkweed and wildflowers along its roads and working with each community along the way.
There is much information about the effects of glyphosate. I will be adding links to reports on this website. The World Health Organization just released a study indicating that this herbicide is a probable carcinogen. Please share with neighbors and friends. We’ve got to stop poisoning our planet.
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. And here we are six years later and still pushing the boulder up the hill. When are we going to stop going down this path of destruction of our bees and butterflies and all our pollinators.?
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 was released on August 27, 2014:
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PRESS RELEASE After 90 Percent Decline, Federal Protection Sought for Monarch Butterfly |
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| 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. |
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