Gone but not forgotten: Milkweed for the Monarchs
Not to go all chaos theory, but talk about the delicate balance in nature's ecosystem being upset and having unintended results as it relates to butterflies ... and I don't intend to get all radical and discuss how frogs are the harbinger of scientific adaptation horror stories or how bees are mysteriously dying off ... but I do feel it appropriate to take a moment to mourn the Monarch butterfly. Although not completely dead yet, it's survival is threatened because its migration patterns have been disturbed by our scientific advances in weed control. Don't go looking for a conspiracy theory -- it's not the pesticides are directly killing the Monarchs -- it's just that we're so damn good at getting rid of weeds that the milkweed on which they laid their eggs has now vanished from their flight patterns. It reminds me a little of the super-germs we're creating by using so much anti-bacterial product (the 1% that stay behind morph into the super-bug -- which I understand sounds a little more X-filey than I may have intended). One final unanswered question of the glass half empty/half full ilk -- if the flapping of a butterfly's wings potentially leads to chaos, does the silencing of that flapping herald the oncoming apocolypse or an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity?
Should the eradication of milkweed lead to your extinction, regal Monarch butterflies, you will be missed.
http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/monarch-butterly-population-has-dropped-drastically/19406875
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