MONARCH MIGRATION TAKES FLIGHT

[Mona Miller]

Cape May, NJ
http://www.nbc40.net/view_story.php?id=6939
"This year's numbers are concerning to researchers. This time last year they were counting about 130 monarchs an hour; this year it's only about 28. "The theory that's being put forth now and I do think it's true, is that there's a lot of variation on the health of the population due to what's going on up here," said Zemaitis.

With loss of habitat being a big factor in the declining numbers, researchers encourage people to start a butterfly garden. Sometimes it's as easy as just leaving certain plants in your yard, rather than yanking them out like another unwanted weed. "A lot of people don't like milkweed and rip it out," said Zemaitis, "that's causing a major problem.""

[Orangeaid]

I live in southern NJ and this is puzzling to me. This is the first year that i have not seen many migrating monarchs near the end of sept and have found no eggs since the end of Aug. On the other hand this is the best year i have ever had as far as rearing monarchs from June through August . Every milkwed patch i went to had many eggs to gather. So while i can understand that the numbers are low for the journey south because of the spring and spraying iam wondering where all the other Monarchs from my area have gone because there were so many eggs i could not take in and i figured the population would rebound in the summer (at least from what i was seeing) and make the migration south better than it has been.

[Mona Miller]

The same thing is happening here. I had a very good start and kept raising and releasing until August and then come the end of August and then Hanna went through and no egg laying for a good month and still nothing. We usually have late caterpillars to try to save. There's no one to save this year so far. I even planted some late milkweed for them.