Farmers Weekly Review

Almost everything has changed since many of us were “knee high to a grasshopper,” like anybody using a phrase like that. This article isn’t about that with one exception — where are all the butterflies — and bugs?
This isn’t good, and it is getting worse.
I have written several times about monarchs — our Illinois state insect. But have you even seen one this summer? Odds are you haven’t, nor have other people in the eastern half of the country. And once people notice that they haven’t seen even one, they start hunting. Surely there must be some somewhere nearby.
And no, there aren’t.
Monarchs, our smallest migrants, weighing less than a single paper clip, are soon going to be hatching out their forth generation, which will make the long flight to the oyamel (evergreen tree) forest of Mexico, where they overwinter for nine months and then fly to Texas/Oklahoma to breed, lay eggs and die. And the 4 lifecycles starts again.
But just where are they? And how do we know?
Scientists track migration, and never more than now when technology has boosted the ability to do actual tracking. And with the largesse of the internet, almost everyone everywhere can participate in various Citizen Scientist projects. Sightings of the first of most migrants — robins, hummingbirds, monarchs and more — are recorded on a database online giving science a clearer picture of migration.
There are many different projects that are truly scientific that track nature, Journey North, is just one of them, but many of my volunteers and I participate in this Citizen Scientist project annually.
Besides reporting sightings, there is also physical tracking. One of the bird specialists on campus actually wires up hummingbirds with the tiniest transmitter before hurricanes to see what happens to them. And the data is so interesting. I was surprised they even survived. But often they are spit out on the other side of the storm. Talk about unplanned travel.
Monarchs, too, are physically tracked. The Monarch Watch project has coded stickers that they sell with the intent of participants physically attaching this paper punch-sized sticker to the hindwing of the fourth generation of monarchs — those are the ones we will see in the late August through early October — period.
As those monarchs travel along, and when those monarchs make it to Mexico’s overwintering area, they are caught and photographed. The tag information is entered into a database, helping to flesh out the actual paths they took. Talk about a needle in a haystack! But when we participated in this tagging, six monarchs tagged in our own Plainfield, were found in the monarch sanctuaries in Mexico.
It felt like hitting the nature lotto when we learned that. But what if there are no monarchs to tag? You can look at the data about the decline of the monarch from these scientific large databases. Last year, we had a similar phenomenon happen with a dearth of monarch reports all summer, but once fall migration started, sightings really picked up.
The monarchs of that fourth or “supergeneration” live nine months, whereas the first three generations live a little more than a month. Perhaps the reason we are only seeing an uptick in populations in late summer is because of the monarch “highway” that starts in southern Canada and travels westward, then south, accumulating more and more monarchs as they travel to their winter homes.
So much has been shared about why these numbers are in decline; there are studies that support a wide variety of detriments to monarchs — all humanmade, of course. Loss of habitat, look how so much land is being developed here. The problem is at the other end, too, much of the oyamel forests have been logged for fuel and lumber. Fortunately, there is a large conservation movement to replant now.
Another major contribution to monarch decline has been attributed to overuse of pesticides. Often agriculture is blamed, but how many homeowners think no bugs are an ideal scenario? Too many. Many farmers are employing set-aside riparian buffer areas for conservation.
And what about the inching up of warmer weather and droughts? This may be the greatest, least controllable challenge of all. We were fortunate to have a guest at our most recent meeting who lives in a national forest in their RV in central Texas.
She said as long as people there could remember, large number of monarchs would coalesce and travel right over this area. Two years ago, there were marked decreases, last year — none. She said the scientists studying this in that area are looking to the extreme and extended drought.
Much of the area these monarchs fly over there is desert, but usually there is some moisture. These last two years, almost none. All season. Also, as the milder weather creeps farther north, including into Canada. Will monarchs be moving up deeper into mid-Canada, making for a longer trip south to the forests?
These declines apply not only to monarchs; they are just the posterchild. But how many butterflies, bees and other bugs have you seen lately in your own gardens and communities? Worldwide insect populations are in severe decline.
So, what, if anything, can we do? And will it make a difference?
We can only try by planting more nectar-rich plants, decreasing the use of pesticides and practices that encourage insect populations.
Remember, every third food you eat is thanks to a pollinator, so our future depends on keeping insect populations successful.