The nonprofit organization Make Way for Monarchs is calling for April 14, 2014, the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's death, to be a day of action and contemplation for monarch butterflies and other imperiled pollinators.

Environmentalist Ellen Moyer warns us that Monarch Butterflies: Industrial Agricultural Warfare Is Killing Them, Us



The nonprofit organization Make Way for Monarchs is calling for April 14, 2014, the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's death, to be a day of action and contemplation for monarch butterflies and other imperiled pollinators. As genetically modified (GM), herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops such as corn, soy and cotton overspread our agricultural lands, farmers spray the land with herbicides. Those herbicides kill the milkweeds that monarchs depend on.



Ellen Moyer informs us that three-quarters our worlds food supply depend on insect pollinators such as butterflies and bees, both of which are seeing dramatic declines in populations. She informs us that overspreading genetically modified (GM), and herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops are killing the milkweed plants monarch butterflies need for survival. Milkweeds contain a natural repellent for monarch predators.

Starting in March it takes five generations of monarch butterflies to make the 2,000 miles journey from Mexico o Canada, then in October, a single generation travels all the way back.



Last year was the worst year in recorded history for the number of monarch butterflies arriving in Mexico. The population of arriving monarchs plummeted 90 percent from the annual average population of the last 15 years, and the insects' annual migration is in danger of disappearing. This catastrophic decline is attributed to herbicide application and urban sprawl in their summer breeding grounds in the United States, combined with illegal logging in the butterflies' wintering grounds in Mexico. The logging has been curtailed. The herbicide problem continues unchecked.



The biggest problem seems to be that monarch lay their eggs on milkweeds which are being killed by excess application of herbicides which is drifting off of farmlands,



Since their introduction in 1996, HT crops have been planted in increasing quantities. In 2007, U.S. farmers applied 185 million pounds of glyphosate herbicides, the most popular type, to their croplands. In recent years, land has been taken out of conservation restrictions and put into production to grow HT corn to produce the gasoline additive ethanol. Both of these developments have been deadly to milkweeds, which have been wiped out in large areas. The essence of HT crop culture is the engineering of the cash crop to withstand herbicides and then dousing herbicides on everything, essentially saying, "To hell with everything, except for my precious crop that can tolerate the poison."



Moyer tells us that the "glyphosate herbicide Roundup is now implicated in a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers." She advocates we all adopt a sustainable lifestyle as the long-term solution, and provides a detailed road-map.





The nonprofit organization Make Way for Monarchs is calling for April 14, 2014, the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's death, to be a day of action and contemplation for monarch butterflies and other imperiled pollinators.

In preparation for National Monarch Buttterfly Day, please read this article and join in this worthwhile effort.