The Monarch Butterfly: Monsanto and other Herbicides

First the bees and now the butterflies . . . In the Washington Post, Darryl Fears writes that “[t]hreatened animals like elephants, porpoises and lions grab all the headlines, but what’s happening to monarch butterflies is nothing short of a massacre. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service summed it up in just one grim statistic on Monday: Since 1990, about 970 million have vanished. It happened as farmers and homeowners sprayed herbicides on milkweed plants, which serve as the butterflies’ nursery, food source and home. In an attempt to counter two decades of destruction, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched a partnership with two private conservation groups, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to basically grow milkweed like crazy in the hopes of saving the monarchs”.[1]

And just the other day, Newsy Science reported that the “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has pledged $3.2 million to save monarch butterflies, that have had a 90 percent drop in its population”.

[1] Darryl Fears, “The monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished “The Washington Post (09 Feb 2015). http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/09/the-monarch-massacre-nearly-a-billion-butterflies-have-vanished/.