Is there a Jurassic Park for butterflies?

This year there seem to be more bees and/or hornets and/or wasps at the nectar feeder than I remember from years past. Yesterday, I saw what I believe was a baldfaced hornet (actually a yellowjacket) emerge from one of the feeding ports as I brought the feeder in for the night. Several yellowjackets, normal kind, have managed to get themselves trapped in the feeder and drowned. The insect activity doesn’t seem to bother the occasional Baltimore oriole that shows up at the feeder, but the hummingbirds are much more skittish.

You may have seen the announcement that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has declared the monarch butterfly endangered. That doesn’t make it subject to the provisions of the United States Endangered Species Act since the US Fish and Wildlife Service has not listed it.

“We conducted an intensive, thorough review using a rigorous, transparent science-based process and found that the monarch meets listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act. However, before we can propose listing, we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith. “While this work goes on, we are committed to our ongoing efforts with partners to conserve the monarch and its habitat at the local, regional and national levels. Our conservation goal is to improve monarch populations, and we encourage everyone to join the effort.”

monarch butterfly emerging

Photo by J. Harrington

Several years ago we were fortunate enough to have a monarch chrysalis on the front of the house. I was lucky enough to be around with a camera when the butterfly began to emerge. This year we’ve seen a few monarchs around the property over the past week or so. I’m both surprised and disappointed there aren’t more since we have quite a few common milkweed clusters on the property. None of the plants along the road have signs of being gnawed on by caterpillars and I’ve not been back into the fields to check those plants.

Have you ever read the stories of lemmings driving themselves off a cliff to their death? The stories are untrue but seem to provide an example of how the human species has been behaving for the past century or so. The Earth will continue just fine without us, but we won’t survive, let alone thrive, without a habitable home planet. It is the only one we have.

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth

Fatimah Asghar

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince’s
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

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