Are butterflies disappearing?

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R

rayg

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This has been bothering me for a couple of years now. It seems as though there are less butterflies around now than ten years ago. It has been three years since I moved up to the northern midwest of the US, and I feel as though butterflies are scarce up here. Surely that can't be normal, but I am not from these parts so I can't judge now against ten years ago. This area used to be tall grass prairie - butterfly heaven. This whole region of the US, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinios, ect., is mostly corn now. There is no tall grass prairie left in the United States, most people don't care and it has been that way for quite some time now. Close to ninety-five percent of the corn grown in the US is GM now; it's all for ethanol and animal feed. We have replaced the largest grassland ecosystem on Earth with a mono crop that contains a gene from a bacteria that destroys the intestinal tract of insects.

Am I just imagining the disappearing butterflies, or are other people seeing this?

Does anyone know if any real studies have been done or are being done concerning this issue?

Just wondering,

Ray

 
yeah thats actually talked about in newspapers quite a lot over here

we're losing butterflies due to land being replaced with crops and also, apparently, climate change.

 
You can contact the folks at the Portland, Oregon organization at Xerces.org

Their organization is named after a butterfly that went extinct.

Knowing whether nature is disappearing is as simple as looking out your window. Where you see concrete, lawn or barkdust, you see loss of habitat for everything. Everybody has the option of pulling their shades or curtains and escaping into TV-land. It gets easier to escape the guilt the more you do it.

But not me...I'm off to AZ to live with the bugs for a week!

 
You should see it over here in the UK - it's awful on the butterfly side. Funny this topic came up - the first one I've seen this year I saw today, and made me think just how scarce they've become. Quite a sad thought really.

 
I don't see them, therefore they are disappearing :p

It is unfortunate though, have been out specifically looking for butterflies and found none. :(

 
Odd, I always see them in my mom's flowers.

Saw a monarch last week by our milkweed patch, hopefully laying eggs as planned.

 
youve noticed. and thats just in a few yrs. bring back someone from the victorian era and they'd notice much more degradation. thats the trouble we cant see the real extent of change as our lives are too short.

sorry to be the voice of doom, but we are in the 'sixth extinction' of life on earth. i read somewhere that extinction rates are 10,000, or 100,000 times over 'background' or normal extinction rates. we cant have 6 billion humans and the same biodiversity as 100 years ago because 50% of suns energy now goes to make human biomass, replacing the insects, flowers, and other non humany stuff that used to use that energy. stuff that makes the world tick.

i'm for drastically cutting the human population to 2 billion using a 1 child per female policy, over 50years, implimented world wide for fairness, to stop all anthropogenic induced environmental issues at a stroke. but whos gonna listen to environmentalists who are concerned about some silly butterflies. we cant stop women having kids can we. can we?? but making silly nature researves and cutting carbon is not gonna help in the long run as everything will eventually get streamrollered by the need for land and resources to make moooooooooore humans :rolleyes:

its a nightmare with a theoretically simple solution. but one that will never get implimened due to basic human greed, vested interests of industry, no political willpower , fear of economic decline, and masses thinking they have an inherant right to breed above all other concerns. religion and other superstition doesnt help either (atheists, being educated and scientifically literate tend to be having the fewest children). no kids here - i must say its really easy thing to do that anyone can do themselves in the comfort of their own home lol.

rant over :p

 
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You can contact the folks at the Portland, Oregon organization at Xerces.org

Thanks for the tip. I had a chance to glance over their website, and this is something I need to become more involved with. The whole premise that healthy insect populations are one of the cornerstones of a healthy ecosystem is something I believe whole-heartedly.

I didn't realize things were so bad butterfly wise in the UK. We don't get much news coverage about what's going on here in the US let alone what is happening on the other side of the pond. I can at least say that I have seen more than 2 or 3 butterflies this year; though last year in Minnesota in the Twin Cities area that was my count. We have alot of milkweed around here, at least three different species probably more, but I haven't seen a Monarch caterpillar yet. I have seen eaten leaves though.

Maybe if enough people start noticing something could be done. Everyone loves butterflies.

"youve noticed. and thats just in a few yrs. bring back someone from the victorian era and they'd notice much more degradation. thats the trouble we cant see the real extent of change as our lives are too short."

Yeah. It is true we are in an era of mass extinction. Something like fifty percent of all species will be extinct in the next 50 years at current rate, but it is happening so fast now that we can see it. That is what is really disturbing. I guess I always thought of insects as the most indestructable and resilient of all living things, 2/3 of all animal species,and now they can't live on what we are leaving them. The biomass angle makes alot of sense. I never made that connection before, though I have thought about all the H2O tied up in these 6 billion people. Population control is a touchy subject, and I don't propose to have any real solutions. It a major problem though. The poorest nations have the fastest growth rates, because children are their only form of social security; unfortunately, because of the lack of education in many of these countries, these people don't realize that these large families are eating up very limited resources and causing more poverty.

 

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