Monsanto blamed for disappearance of monarch
butterflies
RT Published time: January 31, 2014 18:12
As scientists continue to track the shrinking
population of the North American monarch butterfly, one researcher thinks she
has found a big reason it’s in danger: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.
On Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund announced that last
year’s migration – from Canada and the United States down to Mexico – was the
lowest it’s been since scientists began tracking it in 1993. In November, the
butterflies could be found on a mere 1.6 acres of forest near Mexico’s Monarch
Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a decline of more than 43 percent over the
previous year.
Back in 1996, the insects could be found
covering a span of 45 acres. Part of the decline can be attributed to illegal
logging in Mexico that has decimated the butterfly’s natural habitat, as well
as rising temperatures, which threaten to dry out monarch eggs and prevent them
from hatching.
Now, though, biologist Karen Oberhauser of the
University of Minnesota has also pinpointed the increased use of Monsanto’s
Roundup herbicides in the United States and Canada as a culprit.
According to Oberhauser, the use of
Roundup has destroyed the monarch butterfly’s primary food source, a weed
called milkweed that used to be commonly found across North
America. As the agriculture industry boomed and farmers effectively eliminated
the weed from the land in order to maximize crop growth, she was able to
catalog a parallel decline in the butterfly’s population.
Speaking with Slate, Oberhauser said
that when the milkweed population across the Midwest shrank by 80 percent, the
monarch butterfly population decreased by the same amount. With some states
such as Iowa losing more than 98 percent of their milkweed population – the
weed doesn’t even grow on the edges of farmland anymore – the disappearance of
the plant poses a huge risk to the insect’s survival.
“We have this smoking gun,”
she told Slate. “This is the only thing that we’ve actually been able to
correlate with decreasing monarch numbers.”
For its part, Monsanto noted that
herbicides aren't the only reason the monarch is dying. The company cited studies
that showed the butterfly’s population in Michigan and New Jersey were not
shrinking, though scientists have dismissed those studies since they focused on
areas where milkweed was still prevalent.
Monsanto has come under fire before for the
effects of its agriculture-oriented chemicals. As RT reported last year,
studies linked Roundup’s main ingredient to diseases such as cancer, autism and
Alzheimer’s. In spite of these findings, the Environmental Protection Agency
ruled to raise the permissible level
of the ingredient that can be found on crops.
Meanwhile, another report in
October found a clear link between the pesticides sold by Monsanto in Argentina
and a range of maladies, including higher risk of cancer and thyroid problems,
as well as birth defects.
As for the plight of the monarch butterfly, the
insect is still thriving in Hawaii and countries like Australia and New
Zealand. In North America, Oberhauser believes the great migration can still
rebound due to the monarch’s high fertility rates (a single female can lay up
to 1,000 eggs throughout her life). For that to happen, however, scientists
believe the US, Canada and Mexico will have to work together and draft a
strategy that will help the insect safely make its way through the three
countries.
“I think it’s past time for Canada and the
United States to enact measures to protect the breeding range of the monarchs,”
monarch expert Phil Schappert of Nova Scotia told the Washington Post, “or
I fear the spiral of decline will continue.”
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