[HN Gopher] Can we stop the decline of monarch butterflies and o...
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Can we stop the decline of monarch butterflies and other
pollinators?
Author : speckx
Score : 43 points
Date : 2024-08-05 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wisfarmer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wisfarmer.com)
| Carrok wrote:
| My take away from the article, as with most articles which
| utilize a question as a title, is "No".
|
| At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture
| industry to blanket a not-insignificant portion of the earth with
| glyphosate.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture
| industry to blanket a not-insignificant portion of the earth
| with glyphosate.
|
| How is it possible that something so obvious and so
| catastrophic has been allowed to go on for decades? Why have so
| many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by Green
| Revolution stories?
| mulmen wrote:
| > Why have so many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by
| Green Revolution stories?
|
| What does this mean?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Because the ugly truth is that you can't actually feed the
| world population any other way. Once your money is in the
| Ponzi scheme, the only way to get anything back is to ride it
| out and hope you're at the bottom of the pyramid.
| Carrok wrote:
| > you can't actually feed the world population any other
| way
|
| Citation very much needed.
|
| This sounds like it was written by a member of the Monsanto
| PR team.
|
| There are.. other ways, than indiscriminately spraying
| plant poison everywhere.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I thought glyphosate killed plants, does it kill insects too?
| Carrok wrote:
| > "As a result, farmers increased glyphosate use while
| reducing the use of other herbicides," Swinton noted. "This
| became particularly concerning for monarch butterflies since
| their host plants are strongly associated with row crops and
| their numbers began a sharp decline during the period of
| glyphosate adoption."
|
| It kills the plants where insects happen to live and breed.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Roundup kills milkweed, a common weed in corn and soybean
| fields, also used in some other crops. Monarch caterpillars
| _exclusively_ feed on milkweed. This is not a case of
| glyphosphate toxicity, but habitat destruction because it
| does the job on the label well. And folks tend to apply it
| lots of places it doesn't necessarily need to be used.
| Heavily farmed areas need to have some more land set aside
| for biodiversity and better managed to that end.
|
| Additionally there are concerns about insecticides affecting
| monarchs in an entirely different thread, in particular
| increasingly banned neonicotinoid insecticides.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I don't understand how people grew things without glyphosate.
| Getting rid of the weeds manually is extremely labor intensive.
| It's many hundreds of hours of hired labor every week.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People didn't remove all the weeds before glyphosate. Nor did
| all the work manually.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| What do you mean they didn't do it manually?
| kyrofa wrote:
| I've started keeping my own chemical-free bees. My hope is to
| build a healthy apiary of local bees that casts swarms, which
| will help replenish the wild bee population around me.
| mglz wrote:
| If you are new make sure to contact your local beekeeper club
| (if available) to learn about bee diseases. From parasites like
| varroa mites, to fungi, to viruses: They can get really sick
| and if you accidentally produce an unhealthy hive it can be bad
| for other hives nearby.
|
| Definitely go ahead, this is a great thing to do! Just positng
| this as a hint :)
| colechristensen wrote:
| Honey bees aren't native to North America, "replenishing" isn't
| really the right idea, and if you do a bad job, especially
| "chemical free", you could be cultivating and spreading bee
| diseases. If you want to help native bees, plant lots of
| flowering plants with blooms that span the seasons.
| ArcaneMoose wrote:
| My wife really loves Monarchs so we have planted a garden of
| milkweed and butterfly bushes. Monarchs will lay their eggs and
| then we make sure the caterpillars are doing well and have plenty
| of food. When they reach 5th instar and look for a place to turn
| into a chrysalis, we put them in a mesh enclosure to keep them
| safe and then release them once they emerge as butterflies!
|
| It's been such an exciting thing to do every year and the kids
| love helping out too. It's a fun, satisfying, and easy way to
| help out! Highly recommend :)
| Zeetah wrote:
| Thank you for doing this.
|
| I'd like to do the same. Any suggestions for getting started?
| bityard wrote:
| Not who you replied to, but we do this with our kids. The
| only things are you need are a milkweed patch (there are many
| varieties besides the big ugly broad-leaf ones you see
| everywhere) and and a mesh enclosure off Amazon for a few
| bucks. The process is:
|
| You go out, look for the tiny eggs on the milkweed, bring the
| milkweed leaves in, wait for them to hatch, and bring in
| fresh milkweed leaves for food once a day. We put them in a
| paper-towel-lined baking pan so that they have something soft
| to crawl on if they wander off to taste-test new leaf. They
| start out rather tiny and grow to into big fat caterpillars.
| Eventually they stop eating to go on walkabout and anchor
| themselves somewhere near the top of the enclosure.
| (Sometimes they are dumb and you have to relocate them with
| pins or tape.) Once they emerge as butterflies, set them
| free.
|
| We do black swallowtails too. They like dill and parsely.
|
| We never get tired of it. We have had 20-something
| butterflies at a time in a 2-sqft enclosure.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Obligatory comment to avoid planting _Asclepias curassavica_
| (aka tropical milkweed, often found in big box stores), in
| favor of any of the native species.
|
| For the healthiest to butterfly option, your milkweed should
| die back yearly in whatever climate you plant it.
|
| This helps encourage butterflies to migrate at the
| appropriate time and prevents parasite load from building up.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/plan-save-monarch-
| bu...
|
| Alternatively, you can cut it back yearly... but safer to
| just get ahold of a local species.
| samstave wrote:
| +1
|
| Monarchs are so amazing. I recall in the early 1980s in Lake
| Tahoe, they would cover entire trees during their migrations.
| They are the most amazing evolutionary creatures migrating
| 2,000+ miles over multiple generations, whereby every 3rd? gen
| on the migration is the Super Generation that has all the
| 'Valkeryie' Genes that transmit the genetic knowledge forth...
|
| Monsanto and pavement killed the Monarch.
|
| Milkweed is fundamental to the eco system, and (this is IMO)
| due to its very fluidic and milky nectar that was consumed by
| many, it was an easy vector for Glyphosate which is literally
| feeding Krokodile (russian battery-acid-heroin) to Planet
| earth. - but being the Monarchs Sole food....
|
| We are doomed to the petrochem blight (its not about
| "electrical power" -- its about forever chemicals and extinct
| entire food chains.
|
| ---
|
| There is a great documentary on Teflon called "The Devil We
| Know" - regarding teflon forever chemicals in all of us. I was
| milling about in the garage and I needed some tape for the hose
| I was fixing - an I grabbed a roll of teflon tape for the
| threading -- then it hit me.
|
| My dad owned the Timberland Water Company in Tahoe. growing up
| he was plumbing here and plumbing there... every where a
| plumber plumbed the teflon tape was there too...
|
| Also, growing up in Tahoe - we were big skiiers - and to eschew
| the snow we would spray ScotchGuard all over our clothes.
| ScotchGuard is Liquid Teflon Aerosol Spray. Yum and we would
| spray ourselves down in that while wearing our snow gear.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| We plant both "swamp" milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and common
| milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and the monarchs seem to vastly
| prefer the former for their babies. The one disadvantage,
| depending on how much you hate bugs, is that the swamp milkweed
| attracts a large variety of other polinators including various
| bees, flies, and some scary looking though harmless wasps[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphex_ichneumoneus
| sixothree wrote:
| I feel like we're just one collapse away from unrecoverable
| scenario. And we just don't know which extinction will be the one
| that ends it all.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yes, this idea sells well. Folks have been selling that idea as
| long as we have records of folks doing anything at all.
|
| It is just not helpful to think like that and to address
| problems as if each one is an existential threat.
| nritchie wrote:
| As a reformed bee-keeper, I've come to understand that it is the
| native pollinators that really matter. Monarchs and other native
| pollinators do most of the work. Except in exceptional (and
| artificial) situations (like almonds in Ca), domesticate bees
| mostly get in the way.
|
| However, I will add all the "helpful pest control contractors"
| who want to kill every insect on my property probably don't help.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| My wife called our city hall to see if we could let a small patch
| of grass grow tall in our backyard for insect support. They said
| a "pollinator garden" was highly encouraged, so we did. Last June
| we saw more lightening bugs then ever before.
|
| Now in hot August, just before sunset, we have butterflies and
| bees and lots of others bugs. We didn't plant any special
| flowers, we just let the grass and whatever else grow. Next year
| I'll plant some flowers.
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(page generated 2024-08-05 23:00 UTC)