Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Saturday, March 20, 2010 10:42:04 AM
There was a time when people admired the butterfly. Now there are people who are
trying to manage it.
Monarch butterflies, devastated by storms at their winter home in Mexico, have dwindled to their lowest population levels in decades as they begin to return to the United States and Canada.
The monarch loss is estimated at 50% to 60%, which means the breeding population is expected to be the smallest since the Mexican overwintering colonies were discovered in 1975, said Chip Taylor, a professor of entomology and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.
"I think it is very clear that the butterflies lost more than half of the population," Taylor said. "I'm hoping it wasn't as high as 70% or 80%. We've never seen it this bad before."
As a result, Monarch Watch is starting a campaign to encourage gardeners, farmers and transportation officials to plant milkweed, a monarch favorite. The plant is a lifeline for the traveling butterflies.
"It's not just the backyard garden," Taylor said. "We're hoping to encourage changes in roadside management practices, how public lands are managed and how people are managing what they would call nonproductive land or marginal land that they might own."
So...do they want to help the butterfly, or do they want to tell you how to manage public land? Either way, why so much concern for the butterfly? Monarch numbers have most likely been devastated in the past, long before we noticed their migratory patterns in 1975. Yet, humans feel the need to get involved when we see something bad happen to nature.As with the California delta smelt debate, the Colorado elk population, and other things around the country, once we start trying to control it, we create a bigger mess.
It will go on regardless because that is what humans do.