Reversing the Monarch Butterfly Collapse

art credit rule should be: if on side, then in gutter. if underneath, then at same baseline as text page blue line, raise art image above it. editorial note editorial note COLBY SEMPEK PETER LAUFER he strange-but-true story of the monarch and its long-distance migration lures and mystifes but- T terfy afcionados from grammar school children Butterfly, 2008 to wizened entomological specialists, myself included. I Archival pigment print, 24 x 16 in Reversing lived for years in Bodega Bay on the California coast. On the north side of our village, monarchs would cluster over the Monarch winter in colonies clinging to the Australian eucalyptus and local Monterey cypress in Bodega Dunes park after Butterfly fying in from points as distant as the Rocky Mountains. They kept me company while I was researching and writ- ing my book The Dangerous World of Butterfies. Collapse Other monarchs travel farther south. A couple of hun- dred miles down the coast from my bayside offce, mon- Roundup Ready archs gather each fall at Natural Bridges State Beach near Santa Cruz, the only state monarch preserve in California. Milkweed Nearby Pacifc Grove, which calls itself Butterfy Town, usa, threatens fnes of up to one thousand dollars for “mo- lesting a butterfy in any way.” It’s been a crime since 1939 to harass any of the thousands of monarchs that overwinter in that Monterey Bay city. Despite such support, in some places the monarchs are struggling. As I investigated the reasons for this, a thought began to take form: Could guerilla botanists take advantage of Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup to help save the struggling monarch butterfy? Could hackers develop a Roundup-resistant milkweed and preserve the monarch larvae’s sole habitat? Let me explain. Although North American monarchs west of the Con- tinental Divide are thriving, on the east side of the Rockies populations are suffering catastrophic collapse. Not only do those monarchs magically change from clown-colored caterpillars into majestic butterfies, they defy logic with a multigenerational, ultra-long-distance commute that tran- sits Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The naviga- tional details remain a mystery. No one knows for sure how the butterfies manage a journey from the northeast of North America to the few specifc mountaintops in central Mexico where they breed. Monarchs lay their eggs only on milkweed. The larvae those eggs eventually become feed on milkweed, fll- ing up on a poison in the weed that makes them—once they metamorphose into butterfies—unpalatable for most potential predators. Monarch larvae only eat milkweed. No other food source supports the larvae. All indicators COURTESY: THE ARTISTTHE COURTESY: CATAMARAN 27 editorial note editorial note suggest that if we kill off the milkweed, we kill off the The poachers unhooked their rope and headed off with White House announced plans to make its right of way cor for milkweed. They worry about so-called superweeds, black and orange wonders that futter through our sum- their booty. milkweed friendly. weeds developing natural resistance to Roundup. The mers, those stained-glass signifers of lightheartedness and Destruction of monarch habitats in Mexico initiated From backyard butterfy gardens to long swaths of International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds—an rebirth. And we are killing off the milkweed. the threat to the gorgeous butterfy. But the monarch’s roadsides, every effort at conserving milkweed is good independent organization of scientists working in over Across America, milkweed is disappearing in direct crisis no longer can be blamed solely on the illegal log- news. But it’s not enough to counter the Roundup-caused eighty countries—counts thirty-two weeds that fgured proportion to the planting of massive amounts of acreage ging I witnessed in Michoacán. That’s why when Mexican devastation. out on their own how to fourish despite being sprayed with genetically modifed corn and soybeans. Farmers president Enrique Peña Nieto, Canadian prime minster Who says Roundup is to blame for the dearth of milk- with Roundup. Unfortunately the monarch’s milkweed keep weeds out of their gmo corn and soybean felds with Stephen Harper, and us president Barack Obama agreed weed and hence the monarch collapse? The list is long. is not one of them. As a result, in addition to covering glyphosate. The corn and soybeans thrive because they last year to meet for one of their periodic summit confer- The consumer advocacy group Center for Food Safety, for their cropland with Roundup, more and more farmers fnd are “Roundup Ready,” laboratory created to tolerate the ences in Toluca, Mexico—close to the monarch breeding example, commissioned a 2015 scientifc report that it says themselves again pulling weeds and tilling their land— glyphosate herbicide Roundup. But the milkweed in the grounds—butterfy afcionados and preservationists hoped “makes it abundantly clear two decades of Roundup Ready exactly the type of labor-intensive and topsoil-destroying midst of the for-proft crops withers, turns brown, and dies. the trio would add monarch survival to the agenda. crops have nearly eradicated milkweed in cropland of the work that Monsanto promised would be history when it Corn and soybeans often are planted fence line to A posse of artists and monarch scientists coauthored a monarch’s vital Midwest breeding ground.” University of foisted Roundup on commercial agriculture and backyard fence line, leaving little opportunity for milkweed to fnd letter to the three politicians urging milkweed remediation Kansas insect ecologist Orley “Chip” Taylor is founder of gardens. And, according to a report from the Union of poison-free zones it can call home. In the couple of de- across North America. Conservationist authors Peter Mat- Monarch Watch. He and his colleagues at the habitat con- Concerned Scientists, “farmers are increasing their over- cades since gmos and Roundup facilitated the switch from thiessen and Bill McKibben were among the signatories. servation organization call the spread of Roundup Ready all herbicide use” in an effort to control the superweeds. amber waves of grain and a variety of other crops to row “The monarch butterfy is literally being starved to death,” corn and soybean crops a leading cause for the precipi- Monsanto’s propaganda campaign for Roundup promised after row of corn and soybeans, the monarch count, ac- they cried out in the letter. The group called for buffer tous drop in Midwest monarch numbers. Dr. Taylor cites the opposite. cording to a joint venture of government and academic zones between crops, zones planted with milkweed, along Roundup as the milkweed killer and as causing unneces- Small farms specialist Garry Stephenson at Oregon agencies, collapsed from over a billion overwintering in with further milkweed planting along roadsides. “We need sary collateral damage. “Common milkweed had never State University worries that the surge of glyphosate-re- Mexico to just over thirty million. a milkweed corridor stretching along the entire migratory been particularly abundant in crop felds,” he wrote in sistant superweeds is encouraging the continuing and in- When I visited the monarch homelands in Michoacán route of the monarch,” they wrote. an article for the National Resources Defense Council. creased use of 2,4-d, an herbicide that’s been available and to research my butterfy book, I spent time with José Luis The plea in the letter signed by Matthiessen, McKib- “Other species were far more problematic for farmers. But used since post–World War II for the control of broadleaf Alvarez Alcalá and Ed Rashin, two desperados who operate ben, and the others failed to bring the presidents together Roundup didn’t spare the plant just because butterfies weeds (so it kills the broadleaf milkweed). Dow AgroSci- the nonproft La Cruz Habitat Protection Project. Their to save that milagro their three countries share. Bland off- liked it. As common milkweed died out, monarchs began ences wants to market gmo corn and soybeans that can goal is to reforest land around the monarch grounds—a na- cial word from the White House suggested butterfies were to decline.” The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conserva- tolerate 2,4-d so that herbicide can be used against super- tional park that’s now a unesco World Heritage Site—in not on the Toluca meeting agenda. “At the Summit, the tion correlated a variety of studies it considered credible weeds. “It’s an ancient herbicide,” Dr. Stephenson told me. an effort to discourage log poachers from stealing trees the president looks forward to discussing with Mexican Presi- and estimated a North American monarch population “It’s volatile and unlike glyphosate the overspray blows be- monarchs call home. We rode in Ed’s jalopy Ford Explorer dent Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Harper a that’s declined 90 percent since the early 1990s. That’s yond where it’s sprayed.” Some readers may recognize the into those mountains, through land scarred from slash- range of issues important to the daily lives of all of North not a typographical error: ninety percent. name 2,4-d from the Vietnam War. It was half of the recipe and-burn logging, heading up to check on the replacement America’s people,” announced then spokesman Jay Carney, Of course, correlation is not necessarily causation, and used to formulate Agent Orange (2,4,5-t was the other saplings the two had planted. The old Explorer overheated, “including economic competitiveness, entrepreneurship, there is no empirical proof yet that the dramatic loss of component). US military forces sprayed twenty million and Ed managed to get it stuck in the muddy, rutted ex- trade and investment, and citizen security.” monarchs can be blamed on the simultaneous eradication gallons of Agent Orange during the war in the campaign cuse for a road.

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