In the depths of the Californian winter, an ember of hope has flickered for the monarch butterfly, the beloved visitor that has seemingly been on a graceful descent into oblivion
, which is available now from W. W. Norton.n the depths of the Californian winter, an ember of hope has flickered for the monarch butterfly, the charismatic and beloved visitor that has seemingly been on aThe annual mass migration of the orange and black butterflies to the coast of California, as well as a separate odyssey the creatures take each year to the mountains of central Mexico, is among the grandest of spectacles in the natural world.
Prime habitat has been bulldozed or plowed over for monocultural fields of crops, highways, and urban sprawl. Crops and lawns have been doused in deadly insecticides. And climate change is ratcheting up temperatures to a level too feverish for many insects, including butterflies, to bear. “We really are making life as hard as possible for insects right now,” said John Tooker, an entomologist at Penn State University.
“They need nectar and carbohydrates and that food source dries up when it gets hot and dry. Their reproductive output just stops. The temperature increases we are seeing in the U.S. West are just outrageous. If you want monarchs, make it cooler. On our current path, we will just see fewer and fewer of them.”
“They are the panda of the bug world, a sort of charismatic microfauna,” said Pelton. “They are easy to recognize and they have this really special migration that holds a lot of power for people. The task is unending, however, and the pressures on monarchs risk spiraling beyond any sort of remediation. Taylor estimates that conservation groups have to restore two million acres of habitat each year just to keep pace with the amount of land being chewed up by agriculture and suburbia. “It’s like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland where you have to run fast just to stay still,” he said. “That’s the absurd and demoralizing situation we are in.
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