where have all the monarchs gone?

[farmerwhitesl]

I am a corn and soybean farmer and an agriculture teacher. My wife is a first grade teacher, we gather milk weed and monarch larvae every fall at this time and she raises them for her first graders. This has been the most unusual summer in PA. I have not seen a single butterfly all summer. We can't find any larvae and we normally can find 8 to 10 an evening. Could it be the cool damp weather? Maybe storms in mexico last winter? Maybe geneticly modified corn plantings in the area. I tend to discredit the corn issue because those verieties of corn have been planted around us for several years now, last year was a fine year for butterflies, this year, nothing. Has anyone else seen a dramatic change this year?

[drader]

exactly the same problem that I'm seeing here in WV. I collected over 100 larva last year and have found only 5 this year. It is depressing!

[troot]

I work at a Dodge Nature Center in the Twin Cities. We saw few larvae until the 2nd week of August and then we saw only half a dozen eggs and about a dozen larvae. And this was checking over about 25 acres. When we tagged monarchs for public programs on August 21 and 28, we only saw/caught about six butterflies. Things improved the first couple of weeks in September when the blazing star was blooming. We had monarchs nectaring every day and we were able to tag almost two dozen. Not anywhere the amount we've tagged other years (up to 80 in 1-1/2 hours in 1998), but it was great to see some improvement over the dismal summer sightings.
It seems to be across the country that the numbers are down. Is this a trend, or is it just that we have been collecting data for such a relatively short time that this is just a regular decrease in population and things will rebound naturally? Just a thought...

[drader]

I was able to tag 5 monarchs yesterday and 119 today...that's right 119. They were all feeding on ironweed in a nearby pasture. I tagged for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours...stopping about 30 minutes before sunset. The butterflies could be seen in the fading light streaming from the flowers to a nearby stand of trees. I hope to finish out my tags this weekend.

[butterflylover]

In response to farmerwhites. I have been raising monarchs now for many years. Have tagged for two years Here in Northeast Ohio. My mother and I keep records to see how many we get. I did notice that things were different from last year. I found 10 caterpillars all on one leaf on June the 5th in 2003. And continued finding them all summer long (84 total).

This year I did not find anything until July 19th. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find any. Then all of a sudden I was finding one occasionally. Then in the 2nd and 3rd week of August, it was like baby boom. I found over 50% of my findings in those two weeks (45 cats). I found 77 total this season, and gave several away to school class rooms.

I would have to say that I lost at least 10 to parasites or death. and hatched 63 butterflies, One butterflies abdomen was extremely large so it could not fly well, figured it a gonner for sure. But all in all it seemed like I found the normal amount but everything was just much later than 03. And I only found 6 caterpillars in September here. So it seemed to end earlier also here for me. Has been an interesting year indeed. Butterflylover

[wings]

There were very few monarchs in my S.E. Iowa neighborhood in the summer and fall of 2004. I would guess a 5 to 10 fold reduction. We plant swamp milkweed and asters for them.

[Paul Cherubini]

I'm from California, but I visited central Iowa in August and September 2004 and found an abundance of monarchs in, ironically, areas where the landscape is covered with Bt corn and Roundup Ready Soybeans: http://www.saber.net/~monarch/iowapomeroy1.jpg
http://www.saber.net/~monarch/larvaeelakota.jpg

[Mona Miller]

http://www.monarchwatch.org/blog/2008/0 ... ant-weeds/
Roundup-Ready Crops and Resistant Weeds
Please read the facts for yourself.