Monarch Butterflies Considered for Endangered Species Status

[Buster's Uncle]

Monarch Butterflies Considered for Endangered Species Status
LiveScience.com
By Laura Geggel  31 minutes ago



Adult monarch butterfly



The monarch butterfly, once common across the United States, could soon end up on the Endangered Species List.

Over the next year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will determine whether the iconic black-and-orange butterflies deserve the federal protections that come with being listed an endangered or threatened species.

By some estimates, the monarch butterfly population has declined by 90 percent over the past two decades, from about 1 billion butterflies in the mid-1990s to just 35 million individuals last winter.

That loss is "so staggering that in human-population terms it would be like losing every living person in the United States except those in Florida and Ohio," Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

The Center for Biological Diversity and other advocacy groups, including the Center for Food Safety, had asked the federal government to step in with a legal petition filed in August 2014.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the petition was worth its consideration, and the agency launched a year-long review into the status of monarch butterflies this week.

Scientists behind the petition say the butterfly's decline is linked to a rise in genetically engineered crops in the Midwest. Many of these crops are altered to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, which kills milkweed, the monarch caterpillar's only source of food.

The herbicide is so successful that milkweed plants have virtually disappeared in Midwestern corn and soybean fields, and monarch butterflies have effectively lost a Texas-size chunk of their habitat, according to the petition.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comments for their status review until March 2.


http://news.yahoo.com/monarch-butterflies-considered-endangered-species-status-154350464.html

[Buster's Uncle]

bump

[Unorthodox]

Bump? 

I think we all know my opinion on this science by now. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Bump - it was about to be pushed off the page and I wasn't sure you'd seen - bad science or not, Monarch story.

[Unorthodox]

For those interested, though, an opposing view that I tend to agree with: 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-4598.2011.00158.x/full

tldr:  Different study looks at fall numbers instead of winter numbers that the one above notes.  The fall numbers are actually showing a general upward trend of population over the same period.  Contends that maybe the most cited study above is faulty due to assuming that they are looking at the ONLY overwintering site of Monarchs.

Considering we KNOW there is another site in California, potentially more yet to be discovered, and the original study throws out data that doesn't fit what they want (as in the data I reported, since clearly I am mistaken and there can't possibly be monarchs in Utah), I hope someone pays this the attention it deserves. 

That said, saving some milkweed habitat wouldn't be a BAD thing.  For more species than just Monarchs. 

I also had some odd activity with one particular monarch caterpillar constantly leaving milkweed to go eat sunflowers.  It eventually died, and not sure what the hell to make of it. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Evolution in action?

[Unorthodox]

There is literally NO info suggesting it should happen, and since he died (I'm not equipped for dissection, but considering the lack of frass, I'm guessing from intestinal blockage/inability to digest the sunflower), who the hell knows?