The population of western Monarch butterflies is declining at a seven perfect rate every year, which is faster than virtually all the population of Easter Monarch butterflies. The latter species is also about to go extinct. The species has faced a 97 percent decline of its population during the last 30 years. To get to this data, scientists have collected available historical records using statistical models to merge data from the 1980s and 1990s with records gathered by scientists during the last two decades.
Global warming and milkweed depletion may be responsible.
What's milkweed?
One of the keys to having monarchs—for their survival now and in the future—is having lots of milkweed. Because of modern changes, such as suburbanization and Roundup-Ready crops, there's a lot less milkweed than there was in the past. This is a disaster for monarchs since monarch caterpillars can eat nothing but milkweed.
No milkweed, no monarchs!
We want lots of monarchs, so we plant lots of milkweed for them to lay their eggs on. We've tried to maximize our milkweeds in a number of ways—especially since it's sometimes difficult to find them for sale or at least to find them for sale at an affordable enough price to buy more than just a few.
Click here to continue reading (and learn about growing milkweed indoors). THE SMITHSONIAN notes:
Along
with loss of their primary food source, increasing urbanization in
California is likely to blame for the decline, writes Jason Daley for Sierra magazine.
Many feeding and nesting sites have been obliterated by development,
while agriculture has wiped out other areas. Unlike Eastern monarchs,
which famously migrate to Mexico in the winters from as far north as
Canada, Western monarchs spend their winters in nests on the coastal
areas of California before dispersing up and down the West Coast for the
warmer months. So the loss of these nesting sites is a blow to the
populations.
Schultz
and her team are now working to study the breeding times and locations
for the Western monarch butterflies in hopes of better understanding how
it could be protected, reports Daley. While things seem grim now, there
is room for hope, the researchers stress.
"In
the 20th century, we brought bald eagles back from the brink of
extinction by limiting use of DDT," co-author Elizabeth Crone, an
ecologist at Tufts University, says in a statement. "If we start now, we
can make the 21st century the era in which monarchs return to our
landscapes."
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Ask people in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Honduras, Haiti, Libya, eventually you'll find an answer Secretary Clinton
Starting with Hillary Clinton who is apparently on a mission to become this century's John and Martha Mitchell combined. Sloppy drunk? It's in there. It's all in the book. It's dishy and trashy and someone thought she was presidential?
If she had a better ghost writer, she might be able to set herself up as the next Jaqueline Susann.
It's dishy and trashy and she's yet again managed to set a bad example to all.
The good news for the country?
It's unlikely she'll try for president next go round.
We know she won't accept the results -- even if she pledges to do so.
Her book is another ghost written embarrassment intended to make money. She's shameless in sporting her greed which includes outrageous prices for tickets to see her.
And she wonders why the working class felt she was out of touch with their issues?
Two questions that need to be answered.
First, why are US taxpayers paying for Secret Service protection?
She's getting millions for this book so why does the American people have to pay for her protection at her book promotion efforts?
Shouldn't Hillary pick up that tab?
Second, she voted for the Iraq War.
How much of the book's proceeds will she be donating to veterans?
Her greed must be her chief motivator.
When is enough for Hillary?
When does she give back?
She said her vote for the war was a mistake.
Okay, atone for your mistake, don't just line your own pockets.
She voted for the war.
The war that still drags on.
At THE NATION, Iraq War veteran Danny Sjursen wonders why that is and explains:
In Syria and Iraq, the US military is fighting a loathsome adversary in ISIS, but even so, the situation is far more complicated than usually imagined here. As a start, the US air offensive to support allied Syrian and Kurdish rebels fighting to take ISIS’s “capital,” Raqqa—grimly titled Operation Wrath of the Euphrates—killed more civilians this past May and June than the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. In addition, America’s brutal air campaign appears unhinged from any coherent long-term strategy. No one in charge seems to have the faintest clue what exactly will follow ISIS’s rule in eastern Syria. A Kurdish mini-state? A three-way civil war between Kurds, Sunni tribes, and Assad’s forces (with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic Turkey as the wild card in the situation)? Which begs the question: Are American bombs actually helping?
Similarly, in Iraq it’s not clear that the future rule of Shia-dominated militia groups and others in the rubble left by the last years of grim battle in areas ISIS previously controlled will actually prove measurably superior to the nightmare that preceded them. The present Shia-dominated government might even slip back into the sectarian chauvinism that helped empower ISIS in the first place. That way, the United States can fight its fourth war in Iraq since 1991!
And keep in mind that the war for the Greater Middle East—and I fought in it myself both in Iraq and Afghanistan—is just the latest venture in the depressing annals of Washington’s geo-strategic thinking since President Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with the Saudis and Pakistanis, armed, funded, and supported extreme fundamentalist Afghan mujahedeen rebels in a Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union that eventually led to the 9/11 attacks. His administration also threw money, guns, and training—sometimes illegally—at the brutal Nicaraguan Contras in another Cold War covert conflict in which about 100,000 civilians died.
In those years, the United States also stood by apartheid South Africa—long after the rest of the world shunned that racist state—not even removing Nelson Mandela’s name from its terrorist watch list until 2008! And don’t forget Washington’s support for Jonas Savimbi’s National Movement for the Total Independence of Angola that would contribute to the death of some 500,000 Angolans. And that’s just to begin a list that would roll on and on.
That, of course, is the relatively distant past, but the history of US military action in the 21st century suggests that Washington seems destined to repeat the process of choosing the wrong, or one of the wrong, sides into the foreseeable future. Today’s Middle East is but a single exhibit in a prolonged tour of hypocrisy.
We should all be asking why the war continues.
We should all be questioning so-called 'humanitarian' motives for continuing the war.
Movement leader and Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr plans to continue his protests against corruption and to stage them before Iraq holds elections -- supposedly next year, but, again, they were supposed to take place this year and didn't. In addition, XINHUA notes:
Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday announced that he will dissolve his military wing after full defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.
A statement issued by Sadr urged the militants loyal to the Shiite cleric known as Saraya al-Salam, or Peace Companies militia, to join the government security forces and the government-run paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units.
Should Moqtada indeed disband his militia, there will still be many others active in the country.
Rowan Scarborough reports:
The U.S. military is keeping a wary eye on Iran’s most violent proxy militia in Iraq, which has vowed to start killing Americans again once the Islamic State is expelled.
With the Islamic State’s defeat in Iraq coming closer — the U.S. estimates that the once 25,000-strong terrorist group is down to a few thousand followers at most holding only pockets of resistance — the danger from the Hezbollah Brigades is fast approaching.
A commander in the Shiiite battalion, also known as Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and the largest and most ruthless Iranian-trained militia fighting in Iraq and Syria, warned Americans on Sunday that they must leave Iraq or face a new war, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
Said the Fars headline, “Iraqi Popular Forces Warn to Target US Forces after Defeating ISIL Terrorists.”
Spokesman Jafar al-Hosseini issued a similar threat in March. His scripted messages on Beirut’s al-Mayadeen Arab-language TV station suggest the militia is not bluffing and is preparing for that day.
The following community sites -- plus PACIFICA EVENING NEWS, Cindy Sheehan and Jody Watley -- updated:
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