You might not have caught the news about monarch butterflies. It’s partly bad if you’re a lepidopterist or aurelian; even worse if you’re a monarch. The species’ numbers seem to be dwindling, their long migration of thousands of miles from the United States to Central Mexico interrupted by parasites, highway traffic, and milkweed-killing glyphosate that is diminishing their food supply. Maybe the population will recover, but a decimated group can rapidly become an endangered one.
If you lived in my neighborhood, you could have witnessed until recently an annual migration of crows, reminiscent of the famous swallows returning to Capistrano and the butterflies’ return to central Mexico. Each October over the course of 35 years, I casually observed the return of the birds to farms in my area. From fall to spring, they made daily migrations and sub-migrations between daytime feeding grounds in corn fields and nighttime roosting grounds in nearby woods. Numbering in a few thousands, they crossed from southwest to southeast like senior citizens driving to diners for breakfast, and by suppertime made the return trip for the early bird specials. Twice, I noticed their populations had dwindled, but they recovered their numbers in subsequent years. And then the Turnpike Commission built a new four-lane highway through the farmland to which they flocked. The migrations changed; the crows looked for new sources of food and new resting places. Now, the migrations have stopped, and a few remnant crows make the area a yearly habitat, one family apparently finding the woods behind my house a year-round abode.
Two decimated species; two interrupted migrations. And humans seem to be the cause. We use glyphosate to protect our vast corn fields from weeds and highways to transport that corn to our tables. There’s an irony here. We need more and more corn, so we use more and more glyphosate to expand corn fields. At the same time our need and desire for highways means repurposing corn fields to long, wide patches of concrete and asphalt for high-speed traffic, not suitable for tractors and combines. Glyphosate and highways might seem to be different in composition and purpose, but their corollary effects are similar: Dead monarchs and crows and less land devoted to growing a sustaining food supply.
Apparently, much of what we do to make our lives easier not only makes life harder for others, but also threatens the very ease of life we seek. We can’t plant corn in concrete, and glyphosate threatens our health. I wonder whether or not there’s a lesson here about our personal lives and our desire for an easy life.
If you lived in my neighborhood, you could have witnessed until recently an annual migration of crows, reminiscent of the famous swallows returning to Capistrano and the butterflies’ return to central Mexico. Each October over the course of 35 years, I casually observed the return of the birds to farms in my area. From fall to spring, they made daily migrations and sub-migrations between daytime feeding grounds in corn fields and nighttime roosting grounds in nearby woods. Numbering in a few thousands, they crossed from southwest to southeast like senior citizens driving to diners for breakfast, and by suppertime made the return trip for the early bird specials. Twice, I noticed their populations had dwindled, but they recovered their numbers in subsequent years. And then the Turnpike Commission built a new four-lane highway through the farmland to which they flocked. The migrations changed; the crows looked for new sources of food and new resting places. Now, the migrations have stopped, and a few remnant crows make the area a yearly habitat, one family apparently finding the woods behind my house a year-round abode.
Two decimated species; two interrupted migrations. And humans seem to be the cause. We use glyphosate to protect our vast corn fields from weeds and highways to transport that corn to our tables. There’s an irony here. We need more and more corn, so we use more and more glyphosate to expand corn fields. At the same time our need and desire for highways means repurposing corn fields to long, wide patches of concrete and asphalt for high-speed traffic, not suitable for tractors and combines. Glyphosate and highways might seem to be different in composition and purpose, but their corollary effects are similar: Dead monarchs and crows and less land devoted to growing a sustaining food supply.
Apparently, much of what we do to make our lives easier not only makes life harder for others, but also threatens the very ease of life we seek. We can’t plant corn in concrete, and glyphosate threatens our health. I wonder whether or not there’s a lesson here about our personal lives and our desire for an easy life.
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