Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/11/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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 -- Tina Manley http:// <http://tina-manley.artistwebsites.com/>www.tinamanley.com