NA Monarch Butterfly Migration: Flights Canceled Due To GMO

Quote:

"The main culprit," he wrote in an email, is now genetically modified "herbicide-resistant corn and soybean crops and herbicides in the USA," which "leads to the wholesale killing of the monarch's principal food plant, common milkweed." ... It's unclear what would happen to the Monarchs if they no longer made the annual trek to Mexico, the world's biggest migration of Monarch butterflies and the second-largest insect migration, after a species of dragonfly in Africa. There are Monarchs in many parts of the world, so they would not go extinct. The butterflies can apparently survive year-round in warmer climates, but populations in the northern United States and Canada would have to find some place to spend the bitter winters. There is also another smaller migration route that takes butterflies from the west to the coast of California, but that has registered even steeper declines. Oberhauser noted that some Monarchs now appear to be wintering along the U.S. Gulf coast, and there has been a movement in the United States among gardeners and home owners to plant milkweed to replace some of the lost habitat. But activists say large stands of milkweed are needed along the migratory route, comparable to what once grew there. They also want local authorities in the U.S. and Canada to alter mowing schedules in parks and public spaces, to avoid cutting down milkweed during breeding seasons. The migration is an inherited trait. No butterfly lives to make the full round-trip, and it is unclear how they remember the route back to the same patch of forest each year, a journey of thousands of miles to a forest reserve that covers 193,000 acres (56,259-hectares) in central Mexico. Some scientists think the huge masses of migrating butterflies may release chemicals that mark the migratory path and that if their numbers fall low enough, not enough chemical traces would remain and the route-marking might no longer work.

Linky.



To be clear I think the GM aspect is just an extension of human environmental interference, not some new evil. Logging and biofuels can also share some blame.

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