PESO:
I couldn't find the thread where we were discussing the disappearance of
the Monarch but this appeared this morning from tomorrow's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
A big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn
has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels,
farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of
earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once
reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.
Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills
virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive
it.
As a result, millions of acres of native plants, especially milkweed, an
important source of nectar for many species, and vital for monarch
butterfly larvae, have been wiped out.
Onestudy<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-4598.2011.00142.x/abstract>
showed
that Iowa has lost almost 60 percent of its milkweed, and
another<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261219410002152>
found
90 percent was gone. “The agricultural landscape has been sterilized,” said
Dr. Brower.
I was right about Monsanto!
Tina
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Tina Manley
http:// <http://tina-manley.artistwebsites.com/>www.tinamanley.com
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