Given our land-based way of life, country people around the world are uniquely situated to understand the complexities involved in saving monarchs and other endangered species. But that doesn't mean we always get it right the first time.
Almost twenty years ago, my family and I bought land and put a small home on it. As a new homesite in the woods, we needed a septic field. The fill dirt used to construct it carried some botanical hitchhikers from wherever it had come from. Over the next several years, my family and I rhapsodized about the delicately mauve flowers that grew only on the septic mound. We named it Wildflower Hill in honor of this beautiful bloom that showed all signs of spreading, which we blithely encouraged. We were thrilled.
Until we learned spotted knapweed, the wildflower in question, is one of the most perniciously destructive invasives we have in the Northwoods poisoning the soil with allelochemicals so that native plants can’t grow.
Spotted knapweed is also rampant on an infrequently used, undesignated ORV trail that ends at our road. The MDNR has put a proposal on the table to officially designate it and our quiet road as an ORV trail in order to connect it with the larger trail system. Among other concerns, increased ORV traffic on our back country road would act as a superspreader for this invasive plant along our roadside and beyond. This knapweed has a direct negative impact on our native plants, including milkweed.
On our land, it took some years of persistent work, but we did finally manage to eradicate the perniciously invasive knapweed from Wildflower Hill…at least, it still remains at bay. Now trout lily, mullein, black-eyed susan, and others give the hill its namesake.
There are some things you can get wrong and have the time to make right. There are other things where time is so limited it leaves little room for the best of intentions gone wrong. I’m learning that this summer with the monarch butterfly.
Most people know the monarch is in serious trouble. But that trouble has deepened, so much so that recently the monarch butterfly (native to North America and Mexico) was reclassified on the Red List of the internationally recognized International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The monarch was reclassified from a species in trouble to an Endangered Species at very high risk for extinction. Some IUCN estimates place the probability of the monarch becoming extinct over the next 20 years at as high as 43%.
Some IUCN estimates place the probability of the monarch becoming extinct over the next 20 years at as high as 43%.
While the Western population of monarchs is at greater risk for extinction than the monarchs in our home region here in the Northwoods, between the years of 1996 and 2014 Eastern monarchs declined in population by 84%. Yet the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has not listed the monarch as threatened or endangered because, according to the USFWS, “That process has been deferred while we work on higher-priority listing actions.”
Eastern monarchs declined in population by 84%. Yet it is not listed in the US as endangered because the US Fish and Wildlife Service believes it has higher-priority listing actions on which to work.
Monarchs are in sharp decline because of deforestation and the sharp decline of milkweed. Milkweed is in sharp decline because of mowing, the spraying of pesticides (especially the use of Monsanto’s glyphosate on crops genetically-engineered to withstand heavy spraying of glyphosate), the encroachment of urban development on rural lands, and climate change.
Monarchs aren’t the only ones impacted by the decline of milkweed. The plant actually feeds more than 450 other insects, making it a habitat in and of itself. It also offers edible gifts to humans when prepared correctly including the flower buds (in stir fry, etc.) and seed silk (as a cheese substitute and more).
Many people have written about the twin decline of monarchs and milkweeds with suggestions on what to do, often involving the planting of milkweed seed. There are also ways to propagate milkweed from root cuttings or rhizomes. As I know through personal experience planting the seed, however, unless you have a darkly green thumb you’re likely to meet with little success planting milkweed.
Another action people take to help the monarchs include the rearing of the butterflies themselves, protecting them from the time they are laid as eggs to the time they spread their wings as full grown butterflies. Still others advocate for the protection of monarch habitat, both up north with the milkweed nurseries and down south in Mexico with the Mexican forests.
What I’d like to look at is what those of us who live in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula can do to help the monarchs in our region. After all, the U.P. hosts at least two major ports for monarch migration. Both the Garden Peninsula and the Stonington attract monarchs. From these southern reaching peninsulas, in late summer the monarchs embark on the first leg of their migration to Mexico, fluttering off on delicate wings over the vast waters of Lake Michigan.
Born in the U.P. and living in the Northwoods all my life, I’m well aware of the cultural, ecological and political make-up of our region. Individual liberty is highly valued yet when it comes in conflict with Big Power, it’s expected to give way. This Big Power comes in various forms: the mining industry, the energy industry, and the logging industry. Sometimes even the administrators of our County Road Commissions, who have the potential to do great good, see the Commissions' Right of Ways (ROWs extend 33' onto private property from the center of the road) as somehow their private domain to do with as they please rather than as a public service easement in which they do the public a service as the public sees fit.
Urban sprawl and urban demands in the Upper Peninsula also lead to increased development of rural lands contributing to habitat decline for the milkweed and the monarch. For example, our rural lands are colonized by energy corporations, perhaps most notably the American Transmission Company (ATC) and their national grid powerlines (with regular spraying of herbicides along those routes) and Heritage Wind on the Garden Peninsula (a major route for the monarch’s migration). Both of these energy industries are based on delivering electric power not to U.P. communities but to distant urban areas.
In addition, as a vacation magnet for urban residents seeking refuge from crowded environments, our U.P. shorelines and countrysides are visited each summer by thousands (even more than a million per year in recent times). While some love the land and do what they can to tread lightly, many are heedless of their impact on our beloved homeland and country way of life.
In my area roadsides are mowed without much thought for the vegetation growing along those roadsides. Recently a neighbor, having noted the approach of the county roadside mower, rescued several milkweed leaves with monarch eggs to rear the caterpillars at her home as she does so wonderfully every year. But she can’t rescue all the eggs. When the milkweed is mowed, the unrescued eggs are destroyed.
Furthermore the milkweed, if cut at the wrong time, may not re-grow soon enough to produce seeds and reproduce – this at a time when we badly need milkweed to thrive and grow in population.
Poorly timed roadside mowing destroys monarch eggs and caterpillars and can be detrimental to the milkweed plants themselves.
Although it would be impossible to rescue all the monarchs from roadside mowing, if more people can commit to rescuing the eggs and rearing the butterflies on their own property, we can save some. This isn't a solution, only a band-aid until we commit to a actual solution.
Care needs to be taken though. In researching for this article, I learned monarchs reared indoors don’t do as well on the migration to Mexico as those reared in the wild. This may seem counterintuitive to those brought up in a culture that believes “nature is trying to kill us” (as my environmental philosophy professor used to say) but our world is so very complex. In a world where even dung beetles navigate by the Milky Way, it becomes apparent that Wild Creation knows what it is doing. The more we leave it to do its thing, the more in balance everything becomes.
According to one article in Discover Magazine, some researchers found the wing shape of butterflies reared indoors is different than those raised wild. This nurtures butterflies not as well adapted to long-distance flight.
The same article also pointed out that indoor-raised monarchs have difficulty orienting themselves on their migration route.
Another article shows that, when raised indoors, monarch eggs are not exposed to the climatic conditions (amount of sunlight, average temperatures) that they would be in the wild. In the wild, these conditions trigger the reproductive diapause so necessary for the migrating generation. When not exposed to these elements, monarchs of the year's migrating generation continue to reproduce that summer, weakening them for the massive voyage ahead.
Monarch eggs raised indoors do not appear as fit for the Great Migration as those raised wild.
So…is it good to rescue the monarch eggs from the mowers?
From my view the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. But how we care for them from there is extremely important. If we work according to Nature’s guidelines, doing what some call wild-tending, we can rescue the eggs, making sure they are raised in a wild place protected from human activities. After all we and our activities are their greatest predator.
We could also stop mowing our roadsides.
I can hear heads shaking all the way from my desk here in the middle of the woods.
Well, we could – at least on smaller country roads. (And drastically lower speed limits while we’re at it. In the 1960s, even when the amount of human traffic was much less than it is today, “the Humane Society noted an average of one-million vertebrates were killed every day” on our roads; in 2008, the US Congress noted one to two million deer are killed each year on our roadways.)
Or we could time our mowing of the roadsides. If our road commission maintenance people were trained in landscape horticulture, well-timed mowings could become possible. Such knowledge would help protect a lot of endangered species as well as beautifying our communities.
We are, after all, more than mere throughways for traffic. Like with the deer, bear, bees, butterflies, and wild lupine, roadways crisscross our human communities as well. We don’t just live to drive. Most of our lives in fact center on our home life. Why shouldn’t the roadways reflect our love of the land we call home as well?
But I digress - back to the monarchs . . .
“Strategically-timed mowing can be used to enhance monarch habitat across the breeding region,” according to Michigan State University entomologist Doug Landis. Female monarchs prefer young milkweed shoots for laying their eggs. The tender young leaves seem better for the younger caterpillars. The younger milkweed, or at least those that have been mowed (is it true for young plants in general?) also have less monarch predators. As the caterpillars mature, they seem to prefer older milkweed plants. The MSU Extension suggests more study needs to be done and is asking for everyday people to join in the study. Their thought is that mixed-age stands of milkweed are probably best.
Again, though, we have to be careful. While we may be able to time mowing to protect the monarch, we also need to think of protecting their nursery plant, the milkweed. According to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, "mowing milkweeds when they are in flower or have immature seed pods will be particularly detrimental to the plants because they are expending significant energy toward reproduction at that time and may have more difficulty recovering from the disturbance."
Another key factor contributing to the decline of both the milkweed and the monarch is deforestation and the spraying of herbicides, especially glyphosate. Funny thing but you can find these two key factors in milkweed decline within a couple miles of my own home.
Down my road several years ago Weyerhauser clearcut a beautiful maple forest. In one of the following summers, it sprayed glyphosate on the clearcut to keep unwanted trees (i.e. the maples) from regrowing so that a red pine plantation would grow instead.
Whether or not glyphosate is carcinogenic for humans is still hotly debated. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2019 listed it as a probable carcinogen. The US EPA, however, continues to describe glyphosate as not harmful to humans. When the WHO launched an investigation into the common herbicide in 2015, it “became evident that separating science from politics and economic interests would be difficult.” Furthermore, assessment from the WHO “led to unprecedented lobbying by Monsanto (the primary manufacturer of glyphosate” and the crops that are genetically engineered to be resistant to the chemical). Recently the US Supreme Court rejected Bayer’s bid to halt all lawsuits against them claiming RoundUp causes cancer (Monsanto was recently acquired by Bayer.).
Here in my community, Weyerhauser sprayed glyphosate aerially, using a helicopter and spraying just across the roads from a private home and within a mile of other homes, some of which included children. None of us were notified. The only way we knew the area was sprayed was when, biking, we came across a small sign at the end of the logging road advising against entry for 48 hours. Although Weyerhauser is responsible for the clearcut and the spraying, the area was later sold to Lyme Great Lakes Timberlands, sprayed again with glyphosate (by hand this time) by the Marquette County Conservation District, and planted with alfalfa to create deer habitat.
Whether or not glyphosate is harmful to humans, we know it is killing milkweed. One action we can take to protect the monarch in our local communities is to pass zoning laws that prohibit the use of glyphosate.
Finally deforestation itself is hurting the monarch. In Mexico, of course, cutting down the forests where the monarchs overwinter results in obvious harm to the monarch population.
But there is a more subtle problem with deforestation as well, one we in the U.P. can do something about.
In an era of warming temperatures and climate change, the one thing all scientists can agree will help combat climate change (and solve many other ecological issues) is to protect our forests. Forests act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon in a way we humans could never dream of doing with our clunky technology – Wild Creation is so simply elegant yet infinitely complex. Yet in this era of climate change our forests in the U.P. are experiencing increased logging, including clearcuts. And this is happening on citizen-private property, on corporate-private property, and in our public national forests such as the Hiawatha.
As temperatures warm with climate change and the cutting of our forests, researchers have found that the toxicity of certain types of milkweed increases, so much so that it can impact monarchs. The milkweed most susceptible to developing this ultra-toxicity comes from Mexico. Ironically, it’s also the species of milkweed that frequently gets planted up north here as it is the milkweed species most often given out by monarch advocacy groups to those who want to plant milkweed to help the monarchs.
Warming temperatures make some milkweed species more toxic, even for monarch butterflies. Protecting wild forests helps cool the planet.
Climate change, of course, further impacts habitats, shifts climate zones and otherwise creates an unpredictable environment for all, so it’s of particular concern for vulnerable species.
Here in the U.P. we can shift our economy to center around the planting and protection of forests rather than their destruction. Numerous spin-off businesses would develop and thrive with such an economic direction.
Saving the monarch doesn’t have complicated solutions. But it does have solutions that ask us to do things differently than we have been. These solutions also ask us to be mindful and fully knowledgeable of the impacts we have.
We can save not only the monarch but also the planet by simply being who we as country people have always been – independent thinkers who don’t let outsiders control our actions or our land. We can
protect wild forests and meadows
stop the spraying of herbicides
provide our public service workers who maintain our roadsides with arborist/horticultural knowledge and skill
rescue threatened monarch eggs rearing them in as wild a situation as safely possible
oppose development projects, even those disguised as “green.”
Despite the ecological complexities, the role we have to play is so simple, really. All we have to do is care enough to act.
After all, if a caterpillar can transform over a few short weeks into a small winged miracle, aren't we also capable of fundamental change? I want to think so.
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