Restoring Monarch Butterfly’s Habitat

This is a little piece of the article from The New York Times today about restoring monarch butterfly’s habitat. Our opinion is following the article.

MEXICO CITY — Hoping to focus attention on the plight of the monarch butterfly at a North American summit meeting next week, a group of prominent scientists and writers urged the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada to commit to restoring the habitat that supports the insect’s extraordinary migration across the continent.

Calling the situation facing the butterfly “grim,” the group issued a letter that outlined a proposal to plant milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food source, along its migratory route in Canada and the United States.

Milkweed has been disappearing from American fields over the past decade as farmers have switched to genetically modified corn and soybeans that are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate that kills other plants. At the same time, subsidies to produce corn for ethanol have increased, expanding the amount of land planted with corn by an estimated 25 percent since 2007.

“We can’t ask farmers to change their habits,” said Homero Aridjis, the Mexican poet who wrote the letter, which was to be released on Friday.

Instead, the proposal encouraged planting milkweed on roadsides and between fields, and suggested subsidies for farmers to set aside land that is free of herbicides.

To read the full article, click here.

Here is our opinion:

Homero is right about planting milkweed. This is a piece from his article last week. You can read the full article here.”To make up for the vast loss of grasslands to crops and urban development, we need a milkweed corridor stretching along the entire migratory route of the monarch — with plantings on roadsides, in fields and ditches, along railroad tracks, in pastures and meadows and gardens, in parks and public spaces — so that successive generations of monarchs can breed during their journey north.” Unfortunately, we cannot plant enough milkweed to make up for past losses much less keep up with ongoing losses.

We don’t agree, with Homero’s opinion to let farmers continue with the glyphosate use. This issue can’t be solved by solely planting milkweed because the use of glyphosate is a major part of the problem. Something needs to change and it looks like it’s farming habits.

What do you think?