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Originally posted by james weatherford
...and here is new information from a couple of organizations, Kansas State University and Yale University (not sure if everyone would agree That Kansas State and Yale qualify as "major" or "credible", so will let the reader decide).
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/tracking_th...rfly/2634/
Just getting around to look at the article James pointed at. Unfortunately, this is the kind of misleading material we typically see from anti-GMO folks. Okay, the issue for the interview (between a Yale person and an insect ecologist) is monarch butterflies and an observed drop in certain restricted forested areas in Mexico where the butterflies overwinter. The current issue is not the number of butterflies but the specific number of hectares where they are observed inhabiting trees during the winter.
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e360: What percentage decline [in area, not numbers of butterflies] did the current study find, over one year?
Taylor: It was a 59 percent decline, but that’s not really important. In 2003-4, the population declined a lot more from one year to the next.
So it’s not the numbers of butterflies, but an indirect measure, the measured area in which trees inhabited by butterflies are found. First discussed is the extensive illegal deforestation that has occurred in Mexico in these areas. This is waved off immediately by the statement “As far as we know, it’s stopped.” This is Mexico we’re talking about here.
The worry is about a supposed smaller population of monarchs as indicated by the smaller area where butterfly-inhabited trees were found. Later in the interview they do consider the idea that the monarchs have moved their overwintering habitat due to climate change as we seem to be seeing in other animals: “by 2030 the temperature will be so high at those overwintering sites that a lot of the trees will begin to die and the microclimate that butterflies need is going to become vanishingly small.”
So what is the worry about the smaller population? Speculative catastrophe! “What we’re really worried about here is that there would be some sort of catastrophic event that can send the population spinning downward even more.” Why would that be? “Then the impetus for conservation of the population could weaken — because if you don’t see them, you don’t have the motivation to do something about it.” So it’s maybe the fault of the public not being conservation-minded enough. Or something.
But wait! There’s more! “What we’re seeing here in the United States is a very precipitous decline of monarchs that’s coincident with the adoption of Roundup-ready corn and soybeans.” A strong case for cause and effect? Nope, so what’s the problem? Well, with Roundup Ready crops, farmers aren’t leaving enough milkweed, the monarch’s major food,
within their corn and soy fields. So first GMO problem is that the farmer’s fields aren’t weedy enough. But most farmers don’t leave many weeds behind in their fields anyway, so is this real problem? Is anything else going on?
Well, yes, there’s that whole biofuel thing where corn is grown for ethanol and that whole farm subsidy thing where well-subsidized American farmers can undercut world soy prices and sell all that they can grow.
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Ethanol is a big issue too. We’ve seen a 25.5 million-acre increase in the amount of corn and soybeans since 2006. And that’s been at the expense of nearly ten million acres of Conservation Reserve Program land, which farmers are paid to set aside for wildlife.
So this actually makes sense. Farmers are planting more, cutting significantly into uncultivated conservation land that supports the monarch butterflies favorite food. So by the end of the interview the GMO stuff is forgotten and the interview ends with a sensible idea:
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Basically for monarch recovery we’re going to have to create a lot of milkweed habitat.
