Please consider planting milkweed in the spring if you can. And teach
your kids about monarchs. The loss of monarch butterflies "should matter
to more than butterfly enthusiasts... The lost habitat also affects
ground-nesting birds and small mammals vital to the natural food chain,
and pollinating insects such as bees, who provide an essential benefit
to agriculture."
Monarch Butterflies on the Decline
Lansing State Journal
July 30, 2014
Monarch Butterflies on the Decline
Lansing State Journal
July 30, 2014
Look closely outside.
Something’s missing. Something orange, black, white and fluttery.
Monarch butterflies, once a ubiquitous spring and summer presence throughout Michigan, are again a rare sighting this year.
It’s the result of two factors: An ongoing crash in the migratory monarch’s populations due to the loss of habitat — particularly milkweed — and Michigan’s long, cold winter causing many returning butterflies to hang further south or to arrive much later than usual.
“It’s really a big difference. It’s a tragedy,” said Diane Pruden, a Milford Township resident who serves as a citizen researcher for Monarch Watch, a nonprofit education, conservation and research program based at the University of Kansas.
Monarch eggs normally can be spotted in late May and through June on Michigan’s milkweed — a wild plant named for the thick, milky liquid that flows within its broad, green leaves, and upon which the monarch is uniquely reliant. Pruden saw her first eggs two weeks ago, she said.
“The fact it’s so late, I think, is a big problem,” she said.
So are the monarch’s numbers.
One of few migratory butterflies, the monarch travels up to 4,000 miles every fall to a concentrated over-winter location in Mexico, where hundreds of millions hang in high-elevation, oyamel fir forests.
Monarchs covered nearly 21 hectares of the Mexican over-winter grounds in the winter of 1996-1997, and have averaged 6.4 hectares of coverage annually. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) This winter, their numbers covered only 0.67 hectare, said Orley “Chip” Taylor, the founder and director of Monarch Watch and a professor in the University of Kansas’ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
“The monarch population has been going down for the better part of 10 years,” he said. “It reached an all-time low this past winter.”
The butterflies that return to Michigan every year aren’t those fall vacationers — they lay eggs in Texas and Oklahoma and die off, and it’s their offspring that make the return voyage. The butterflies then may go through up to three hatching cycles in Michigan before the fall butterflies again make the southern migration.
The monarch has a worldwide range including Europe, Australia and Hawaii, so its overall population isn’t yet at risk of becoming threatened or endangered. But “there’s a great deal of concern that the monarch migration is on the verge of collapse,” Taylor said.
The northward migration, and the reproduction that occurs along it, is reliant on what Taylor calls “the milkweed corridor,” an area through the central plains states featuring the plant. But it’s this same area where agriculture has exploded, particularly expanded growth of corn coinciding with a push for ethanol fuel, and has reduced milkweed growth, he said.
Nearly 23.7 million acres of grassland, wetlands and shrublands were converted to agriculture in this corridor between 2008-2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“They’re taking milkweeds out of the system, and monarchs are totally dependent on milkweeds; they can’t raise their caterpillars on anything else,” he said.
It should matter to more than butterfly enthusiasts, Taylor said. The lost habitat also affects ground-nesting birds and small mammals vital to the natural food chain, and pollinating insects such as bees, who provide an essential benefit to agriculture.
“Ranger” Steve Mueller, a resident of Cedar Springs in Kent County, nature columnist and president of the West Michigan Butterfly Association, said those who want to help should try to compensate for the milkweed plants lost to agriculture and development. Groups like Monarch Watch in the spring offer milkweed plants for home gardens.
“Our yards are going to become increasingly more important as our population continues to grow and we monopolize more of the natural area,” Mueller said. “If we do the landscaping around our homes more intelligently, there’s a much better chance for the monarchs.”
Because the butterfly lays so many eggs, and has a number of reproductive cycles within a year, conditions that change for the better can provide a real boost to their numbers, Midland-based monarch researcher and enthusiast Denny Brooks said.
Bad winter storms dropped the Mexican over-winter population of monarchs to 2.83 hectares in 2000-2001, down from 9 hectares the previous winter.
But the next winter, the population was back up to covering 9.35 hectares, Brooks noted.
“We’re looking for that rebound generation,” he said.
Keith Matheny
is a reporter for the
Detroit Free Press.
Something’s missing. Something orange, black, white and fluttery.
Monarch butterflies, once a ubiquitous spring and summer presence throughout Michigan, are again a rare sighting this year.
It’s the result of two factors: An ongoing crash in the migratory monarch’s populations due to the loss of habitat — particularly milkweed — and Michigan’s long, cold winter causing many returning butterflies to hang further south or to arrive much later than usual.
“It’s really a big difference. It’s a tragedy,” said Diane Pruden, a Milford Township resident who serves as a citizen researcher for Monarch Watch, a nonprofit education, conservation and research program based at the University of Kansas.
Monarch eggs normally can be spotted in late May and through June on Michigan’s milkweed — a wild plant named for the thick, milky liquid that flows within its broad, green leaves, and upon which the monarch is uniquely reliant. Pruden saw her first eggs two weeks ago, she said.
“The fact it’s so late, I think, is a big problem,” she said.
So are the monarch’s numbers.
One of few migratory butterflies, the monarch travels up to 4,000 miles every fall to a concentrated over-winter location in Mexico, where hundreds of millions hang in high-elevation, oyamel fir forests.
Monarchs covered nearly 21 hectares of the Mexican over-winter grounds in the winter of 1996-1997, and have averaged 6.4 hectares of coverage annually. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) This winter, their numbers covered only 0.67 hectare, said Orley “Chip” Taylor, the founder and director of Monarch Watch and a professor in the University of Kansas’ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
“The monarch population has been going down for the better part of 10 years,” he said. “It reached an all-time low this past winter.”
The butterflies that return to Michigan every year aren’t those fall vacationers — they lay eggs in Texas and Oklahoma and die off, and it’s their offspring that make the return voyage. The butterflies then may go through up to three hatching cycles in Michigan before the fall butterflies again make the southern migration.
The monarch has a worldwide range including Europe, Australia and Hawaii, so its overall population isn’t yet at risk of becoming threatened or endangered. But “there’s a great deal of concern that the monarch migration is on the verge of collapse,” Taylor said.
The northward migration, and the reproduction that occurs along it, is reliant on what Taylor calls “the milkweed corridor,” an area through the central plains states featuring the plant. But it’s this same area where agriculture has exploded, particularly expanded growth of corn coinciding with a push for ethanol fuel, and has reduced milkweed growth, he said.
Nearly 23.7 million acres of grassland, wetlands and shrublands were converted to agriculture in this corridor between 2008-2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“They’re taking milkweeds out of the system, and monarchs are totally dependent on milkweeds; they can’t raise their caterpillars on anything else,” he said.
It should matter to more than butterfly enthusiasts, Taylor said. The lost habitat also affects ground-nesting birds and small mammals vital to the natural food chain, and pollinating insects such as bees, who provide an essential benefit to agriculture.
“Ranger” Steve Mueller, a resident of Cedar Springs in Kent County, nature columnist and president of the West Michigan Butterfly Association, said those who want to help should try to compensate for the milkweed plants lost to agriculture and development. Groups like Monarch Watch in the spring offer milkweed plants for home gardens.
“Our yards are going to become increasingly more important as our population continues to grow and we monopolize more of the natural area,” Mueller said. “If we do the landscaping around our homes more intelligently, there’s a much better chance for the monarchs.”
Because the butterfly lays so many eggs, and has a number of reproductive cycles within a year, conditions that change for the better can provide a real boost to their numbers, Midland-based monarch researcher and enthusiast Denny Brooks said.
Bad winter storms dropped the Mexican over-winter population of monarchs to 2.83 hectares in 2000-2001, down from 9 hectares the previous winter.
But the next winter, the population was back up to covering 9.35 hectares, Brooks noted.
“We’re looking for that rebound generation,” he said.
Keith Matheny
is a reporter for the
Detroit Free Press.