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Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

1659447091

Comments (37)

  • shoobiedoo
    I'll never forget my first week working housing demolition in the Japanese countryside a few years ago. We were outside tearing down an old house, when I saw what I thought were bats. In broad daylight. But they were moving slowly... and I could see their wings beating. Holy crap, those are butterflies. Huge, stunningly beautiful, butterflies. And not just one or two, but many of them. When I was able to get a bit closer, they had dark purple lines and swirls, so not completely black. Housing demolition was a brutal job for many reasons but seeing that kind of thing made it more than worth it.
  • 1659447091
    >> To better understand the stresses on these migratory species, scientists at Lighthouse Field are testing a new ultralight radio tag. Weighing less than a tenth of a gram, these tags, when placed on butterflies, can passively ping Bluetooth- and location-enabled cellphones of anyone nearby.They put a solar powered tracking tag on a butterfly...Then made an app and gamified it to get people to use their phones to collect, track, and upload the processed monarch migration data. It's like Pokemon Go meets SETI@Home for butterflies.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZyJn6BENchttps://swmonarchs.org/ProjectMonarch.phphttps://celltracktech.com/pages/project-monarch-press-releas...
  • tastyfreeze
    It is my hope that humans can ditch their love affair with pesticides. This is just one example of the unintended impact of pesticides.I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.
  • nemo
    I live in Austin, we used to have huge butterfly migrations long ago, they were amazing to see, big swarms of Queen butterflies as well as Monarchs and other species. Last year's was heartbreaking to see, handfuls where there once were swarms, though I think that was driven by the drought. I have a pollinator garden and have been tracking butterflies in iNaturalist for a decade, last few years the numbers have been showing real decline. I think it's mostly habitat loss for my area.
  • wewewedxfgdf
    We need the poison we spray through the entire environment to kill only non-beautiful insects.Startup opportunity, anyone?
  • tabbytown
    I planted narrow leaf milkweed in my yard for the first time this spring. This is the first time I've planted something with the intention of it being eaten.
  • fooqux
    I wish clover lawns would at least make a comeback. Still extremely hard to find seed for it though.
  • kleton
    Gen X and Millenials don't share Boomers' obsession with green lawns, so it's a race against time, whether Boomers or lightning bugs will go extinct first
  • sholladay
    Stop planting butterfly bushes! It’s a trap. Instead, plant milkweed. Support their entire lifecycle.The names of these plants ought to be changed.
  • Rover222
    Pesticides... messing up everything from butterflies to human colon cells at the moment.
  • oomuinio
    [dead]
  • analog8374
    [dead]
  • atlasagentsuite
    [dead]