OY VEY! All this milkweed and NO MONARCHS!

For the past 16 years I have been allowing Common Milkweed to naturalize on my land for the Monarchs butterflies. This is just one of several big patches that I maintain.  (I am now in the process of certifying my land as a Monarch Way Station through Monarch Watch.)

Normally I could walk out there and within minutes find the whole life cycle of the Monarch butterflies.  This year: zero-zilch-nada.  I found only THREE EGGS, which I brought in to raise for my grandson to watch.  Only one hatched.  It is now a pupa.  The question is, when it emerges as a butterfly, will it be able to find a mate?

As for adult butterflies, I've only seen one Monarch all summer.  Other species are scarce, too.   Normally this field would be teeming with all kinds of butterflies, as well as bees and other insects.  This year there are very few.   According to a March 18, 2013 article on the National Geographic News site, this year has hit an all-time low for Monarch populations.

The most common butterflies on my land this summer seems to be the skippers and  fritillaries, but even those are few and far between.   I saw on the news that we have lost a whole generation of Monarchs down around Texas, due to bad weather.  Parts of the country were so cold this spring that there was no milkweed for the Monarchs to breed on when they arrived.  Here we had rain every day for a month, followed by an unseasonal heat wave.  Now it is chilly again, breaking record lows all over the state.   Yes indeed, global weirding is a reality!

We have also lost a lot of Monarchs over the years due to loss of habitat.  Monarchs migrate north in stages --as many as four generations per summer -- and if one of those generations can't find milkweed to breed on, well, you end up with no butterflies going further north.  Like this year (sigh).  As I always do in all my Monarch reports, I strongly encourage everyone to save a space in their landscaping for some milkweeds to feed the Monarchs.  If you don't want Common Milkweed (which spreads by underground runners that can be invasive in small spaces), then try one of the many other kinds.  The so-called Butterfly Flower (formerly "Butterfly Weed") comes in a variety of colors that will fit any garden.  And it stays put in a pretty clump.

The Torah (Leviticus 19.27) says:

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.   Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God."

Of course, this originally referred to the human poor gleaning the fields for leftover crops.  However, I would like to suggest that we extend this to include to other species on our planet.  We need those "wild corners" for species like Monarch butterflies to survive.  Maybe this is also something that God had in mind when he told us to leave the corners of our fields.  Nowadays, very few people actually go out and glean fields, but a lot of wildlife species benefit from leaving space for them to live.  We do not need to squeeze out every bit of profit from every inch of land.  Leaving the corners for God's creatures benefits us all.  Keep this in mind when you plan your garden.

Where are the Monarch butterflies this year?

Over the years, I have purposely allowed Common Milkweed to naturalize on my land, because it is the food plant of the Monarch butterfly larva.  The area where I live is on the migration route and a breeding grounds for the larvae.  (In fact, the Monarch is the state butterfly of Minnesota.  I consider my place to be a butterfly sanctuary.)  The caterpillars will only eat plants in the Milkweed family -- which include not only the Common Milkweed, but also Butterfly Flower ( formerly known as Butterfly Weed, but renamed "flower" by retail greenhouses) and Aesclapia varieties.   So it's a good idea to have some of these plants in your  butterfly garden if you want to attract Monarchs.

In past years, I could go out into the field this time of year and, within minutes, find either larvae or eggs from Monarchs, as well as see the females fluttering from plant to plant laying more eggs. This year, zilch, zero, nada.  I wanted to find some eggs and/or caterpillars to raise so my little grandson could watch them grow and pupate.  A few years ago his older brother, at around age three, was amazed to see an adult Monarch emerge from the pupa. "Butterfly in there!" he exclaimed in delighted surprise. He also delighted in releasing the butterflies. Now his brother is about the same age and spending daycare time with us, so I wanted to do this project again. I went in search of larvae or eggs, but found not a single one. I must have looked under the leaves of a hundred plants or more, with no luck.  So what happened?

It's hard to say.  Did all those fires in the Southwest kill the Monarchs as they migrated from Mexico or the Gulf states?  Was the long cold spell here in Minnesota this spring too much for those who did arrive?  Are they being killed off by genetically-modified corn pollen from plants with BT (Bacillus thuringensis) built in to kill corn earworms -- and any other caterpillars it comes in contact with?  Is climate change upsetting the migration cycle?  Is it a combination of all these things?  We do know that their wintering habitat in Mexico is shrinking, due to illegal logging of the areas where they normally go.   In addition, there are fewer and fewer places for Monarchs to stop along the way.



Female Monarch
(Photo by Kenneth Dwain Harrelson
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

 Monarch butterflies travel north at about 50-100 miles per day.  The butterflies don't make a single trip from Mexico to Minnesota.  Instead, they breed along the way, then their offspring continue the journey.  It take 3 or four generations for them to reach Minnesota from Mexico.  In other words, they travel in stages, as spring moves northward and flowers become available for nectaring and Milkweed plants for breeding.  You can read more about the migration and see a map at this site:  http://www.fs.fed.us/monarchbutterfly/migration/index.shtml.

Only once in my life have I seen a migrating flock passing through Minnesota.   It was many years ago, when I was still in college.  A fellow student and I were driving along a back country road when the call of nature came, so we pulled over and I  went into the woods to pee.  Suddenly I was surrounded by fluttering Monarchs.  There must have been three or four hundred of them.  It was a magical moment I will never forget.  I called to my buddy to come see, and he was amazed, too.   Of course, I didn't have a camera with me (I never seem to at these moments) so the only record of this event is in my memory - and I don't even remember exactly where it was.  But I'll never forget the wonder of it!

Even if I could remember the place, I'm not sure that patch of woods still exists.  The land is becoming more and more developed along the migration route, with fewer "way stations" for the butterflies to breed and feed.   So one way you can help the Monarchs is to plant milkweed for them.  Each fall, I harvest the milkweed seeds on my land and sell them in my eBay store, The Happy Rooster, for butterfly gardeners.   I have both the Common Milkweed and what I call Swamp Milkweed, the Aesclapia species with the narrower leaves that likes ditches and other damp areas.  I do a pretty good business with this, since commercial seed companies don't offer such "weeds" in their catalogs.  In this way, I am doing my little bit to help Monarchs survive.  You can do the same:  Be a good Monarch steward and plant some milkweed in your butterfly garden this fall -- help save our state butterfly.