Stop planting butterfly bushes! It’s a trap. Instead, plant milkweed. Support their entire lifecycle.
The names of these plants ought to be changed.
Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
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Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#22I'll never forget my first week working housing demolition in the Japanese countryside a few years ago. We were outside tearing down an old house, when I saw what I thought were bats. In broad daylight. But they were moving slowly... and I could see their wings beating. Holy crap, those are butterflies. Huge, stunningly beautiful, butterflies. And not just one or two, but many of them. When I was able to get a bit closer, they had dark purple lines and swirls, so not completely black. Housing demolition was a brutal job for many reasons but seeing that kind of thing made it more than worth it.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had a really bad year of mosquitos and got one of the spraying services in. An hour later, monarch having a seizure on our porch. Oops. Never again.
Mosquito dunks and clear standing or pooling water.
There’s a swamp near us and a bunch of neighbors.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#24Stop planting butterfly bushes! It’s a trap. Instead, plant milkweed. Support their entire lifecycle. The names of these plants ought to be changed.
I'm not American, grew up on a Caribbean island. When I was little milkweed was everywhere, including our yard. Consequently monarch butterflies were everywhere.
But we fought the milkweeds cause nobody wanted them in their yard cause before long it's all you had.
We won the war but we don't have as many monarch butterflies anymore.
Here it had nothing to do with pesticides, we just destroyed their lifecycle.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#25I live in Austin, we used to have huge butterfly migrations long ago, they were amazing to see, big swarms of Queen butterflies as well as Monarchs and other species. Last year's was heartbreaking to see, handfuls where there once were swarms, though I think that was driven by the drought. I have a pollinator garden and have been tracking butterflies in iNaturalist for a decade, last few years the numbers have been showing real decline. I think it's mostly habitat loss for my area.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#26Pesticides... messing up everything from butterflies to human colon cells at the moment.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#27[dead]
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#28Gen X and Millenials don't share Boomers' obsession with green lawns, so it's a race against time, whether Boomers or lightning bugs will go extinct first
On the other hand, I don't think I know any millenials that don't have an extremely overbearing HoA that forbids anything other than a grass lawn.
I looked it up and a couple of states have laws against HOAs from forcing your to have a grass lawn. Alternatives can include native plants, drought tolerant plants, xeriscaping, vegetable gardens depending on state. The states I've found are California, Colorado, Florida, Texas and Maryland, Nevada.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had a really bad year of mosquitos and got one of the spraying services in. An hour later, monarch having a seizure on our porch. Oops. Never again.
Mosquito dunks and clear standing or pooling water.
This stopped working in the mid-Atlantic when invasive tiger mosquitoes arrived. They need like a bottle cap sized amount of water so even things like a flower can hold enough water for them to reproduce.
We’re using scented lures which have the right salt + lipid combo to attract mosquitoes. It helps but I still wish Nathan Myrvold had seriously developed that “photonic fence” product.
Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
it is not love, we need to make it unprofitable homeowners have nothing on farms, acres and acres of pesticides and monocultures
> we need to make it unprofitable Hard to do that when the very thing you're fighting against drastically lowers the cost of the product. No, this is what regulation and laws are for. Too bad science and the like seem to be on the way out currently. :/
yeah exactly, it can be done but it's harder and more expensive (though likely not as expensive as meat industry subsidies)