'The Year the Monarch Didn't Appear' in NY Times

Monarch butterflies in Big Sur, Calif.  (October 2013)

On November 24, Jim Robbins, author of The Man Who Planted Trees, wrote a piece on monarch butterflies which was featured in the News Analysis section of the New York Times Sunday Review. 

Every year on the first of November, monarch butterflies reach central Mexico where they hibernate for the winter season after migrating from North America. According to Robbins, "last year's low of 60 million [monarchs] now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse." Yikes. 

I've included some key points about this unfortunate decline from "The Year the Monarch Didn't Appear" below:

--"Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline."
--Another factor that has not been widely recognized: the precipitous loss of native vegetation across the United States" which is mostly due to the way the United States farms. 
--"As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes." 
--Another major cause: "Roundup, a herbicide that kills all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it" which results in millions of acres of native plants, like milkweed which is an important source of nectar for many species, getting wiped out.
--"The loss of bugs is no small matter. Insects help stitch together the web of life with essential services, breaking plants down into organic matter, for example, and dispersing seeds. They are a prime source of food for birds."  
--"80% of our food crops are pollinated by insects."
--In addition to monoculture farm fields, diverse natural habitat has been replaced with "the biological deserts that are roads, parking lots and bluegrass lawns." 
--Native trees are not only grocery stores, but insect pharmacies as well.
--Reversing the hegemony of chemically green lawns: if you've got just lawn, you've got nothing.
--If the bees were to truly disappear, we would lose 80 percent of plants.

Please see the NY Times article for the full story.

And since we are on the topic, here is a short video on the loss of monarch butterflies from National Geographic:

Works Cited: Robbins, Jim. “The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear.” New York Times. 22 November 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?_r=0>

Photo: Monarch butterflies. Credit: Caitlin Keller
Video: Monarch butterflies. Credit: National Geographic