Butterflies and Gardens
Winter 2009 Volume IV, Issue 5

Inside this issue

• Migrating with Monarch Butterflies
• Winona LaDuke Addresses Indigenous Food Security
• Percy Schmeiser Speaks Out about Genetic Engineered Canola Case
• What's Going On in My Milkweed Patch?
• Children Learn the Life Cycle of Monarch Butterfly
• Seventh Grader Submits Monarch Butterfly Poem
• Monarch Migration Reaches Texas and Beyond
• Reforestation Efforts Are Underway in Mexico
• Where Are My Monarchs?
• Happy Tonics Member in the News

Migrating with Monarch Butterflies
by Mary Ellen Ryall

Midwest, USA – In September 2008, Sandy Stein, Happy Tonics Secretary, and I traveled cross- county to Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico. Happy Tonics exhibited and participated in the 3rd Annual Symposium for Sustainable Food & Seed Sovereignty. Along the way, we experienced the rare privilege of actually migrating with the monarchs.

Tall Grass Prairie in Iowa © Mary Ellen Ryall

Native habitat allows the monarch to nectar on plants along roadways and highways, one of the main travel routes of the butterfly. We witnessed that Iowa, Missouri, and parts of Kansas have restored native tall grass prairie along roadways and highways. The reestablishment of native prairie provides habitat not only for butterflies but also for other insects, birds, and animals. Native habitat also helps the environment by leaving a small carbon footprint.

Stopping in Story City, Iowa, we walked out into a prairie and gathered seeds of prairie coreopsis, sunflowers, black-eyed Susan, purple and yellow coneflowers, ground cherry, vervian, and wild bergamot. Native nectar seed was brought back to the Shell Lake Monarch Butterfly Habitat. The seed was scattered within the Monarch Butterfly Habitat in October.

Winona LaDuke Addresses Indigenous Food Security

White Earth Reservation, Callaway, Minnesota, USA – Carbon limits have been reached, and there is less access to cheap fossil fuel. Winona LaDuke, Director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth, teaches us that there are two paths to walk. One path is well worn and scarred, and the other is the green path. To be more sustainable, we need to reconnect to Mother Earth and start raising our own locally grown food. We need to stop relying totally on petroleum-driven global food markets.

We need to participate in our present and future food security needs. There is tremendous challenge with the global food supply, including: increasing high cost of a petroleum-driven global food supply, contamination from genetic-engineered (GE) or genetically modified organism (GMO) crops, pesticides and herbicides, and global warming, to name a few. The importance of the green path comes home to all of us. As the Earth experiences a decline of cheap petroleum, an increase in drought conditions and desertification, and more violent storms around the world, we need to start to prepare for our own food security wherever we live.

Source: LaDuke, W. (2008). Anishinaabe Prophecy: Communities must choose the green path for food, energy. Tribal College Journal, 20(2), 60-61.

Percy Schmeiser Speaks Out about Genetic Engineered Canola Case

Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico – Percy Schmeiser, a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, Canada, was a keynote speaker at the 3rd Annual Symposium for Sustainable Food & Seed Sovereignty on 26-27 September 2008. Schmeiser single-handedly fought Monsanto, an agro-chemical company, over contamination of his organic canola fields with Roundup Ready canola, a genetic- engineered (GE) crop. He took Monsanto to court because he did not “steal” Monsanto’s genetically engineered patented seed, which unintentionally contaminated Schmeiser’s canola fields.

Farmers have always had the right to plant and save their own seed without threat of a company suing them over crop contamination. Percy fought for the right of all farmers to be able to plant and save their own heritage seed.

Percy Schmeiser settled his lawsuit with Monsanto on 9 March 2008. Monsanto has agreed to pay all the clean-up costs of the Roundup Ready canola that contaminated Schmeiser's fields. Percy believes this precedent-setting agreement ensures that farmers will be entitled to reimbursement when their fields become contaminated with unwanted Roundup Ready canola or any other unwanted GMO plants.

To learn more about risks of genetic engineered crops to non-GE fields and the brave fight of one organic farmer in Canada, visit our links page on the Happy Tonics Web site.

Percy Schmeiser in his canola fields © photo provided by Percy Schmeiser

What's Going On in My Milkweed Patch?
by Bob Hasman

Cumberland, Wisconsin, USA – On 15 August 2008, I was looking out the kitchen window and saw the leaves of one of my bigger milkweed plants moving. Then I saw a tail and finally the head of a mouse. It was moving up and down, from milkweed plant to milkweed.

I plant the patch of milkweed outside my window and it is thick. Was the mouse looking for food? I watched it for about five to 10 minutes, and then it disappeared. There was a small frog on another milkweed plant (maybe about an inch long). I know frogs are snake food. Might they be mouse food? If so milkweed plays another role in the ecosystem.

NOTE: Does anyone have data on small animals and reptiles in a milkweed patch and the role they play? Let Happy Tonics know, and we will share your research data.

Bob Hasman pulling spotted knapweed at Monarch Butterfly Habitat in Shell Lake © Mary Ellen Ryall

Children Learn the Life Cycle of Monarch Butterfly

Oregon, Ohio, USA – JoAnn Flanagan, Happy Tonics member, reports that she attended the Monarch Festival at the Trautman Nature Center, Maumee State Park, earlier this fall with her granddaughter Lauren, who is 8 years old and in the third grade.

There were lots of children’s activities at the festival, and JoAnn shared one of them with Happy Tonics. “Lauren made the life cycle of the monarch on a paper plate that was so creative. The caterpillar pupa was made of green-dyed shell macaroni. The egg was a little pearl bead they glued to the leaf, and the caterpillar was spiral macaroni.”

Seventh Grader Submits Monarch Butterfly Poem

Monarch
by Christina

Fly, monarch, fly leave the land of so
called perfect corn, leave past the
borders of Mexico
Travel to a land flowering in 4 corns
blue, red, white and yellow, and
where milkweed shoots flourish and you
survive, no more poisonous control on
your life
you and your friends survive, spell life on
revive in colorful wings, your precious
corn or known as maize and kiki is
harvested with tender hands, sown from
the crops of Mother Earth, they sit in
throneful baskets, revered as
mother goddesses, in the 4 colors
Fly, monarch, fly. 

Note: Christina and I met at the 3rd Annual Symposium for Sustainable Food and & Seed Sovereignty. She attends the School of Rio Gallinas in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Christina was very interested in our mission of Sanctuary for the Monarch Butterfly and our newsletter, which teaches about the plight of the monarch butterfly and the dangers of genetic-engineered corn pollen to the monarch butterfly.

Monarch Migration Reaches Texas and Beyond
by Chris Waldron

Texas, USA – During the week of 23 October, monarch watchers all over Texas and in the northern parts of Mexico have been saying, “Las mariposas estan aqui” (the butterflies are here). Despite worries that the cold temperature would slow their migration, the monarchs have been arriving at their wintering roosts in Mexico since late October.

Texas butterfly enthusiasts reported seeing monarchs arriving at a rate of 537 monarchs a minute. A monarch was tracked flying 558 miles in 3 days. That is quite a distance for a little insect with the weight of a maple leaf. Texas has two areas that are used as funneling points by the monarchs. One flyway extends from I-35 to Midland and is roughly centered on the cities of Wichita Falls, Abilene, San Angelo, and Eagle Pass. The other is the Coastal Flyway and is narrower, extending about 20 miles inland along the Gulf Coast.

Everyone hopes that the weather stays warm until the monarchs arrive safely at the Mexican Monarch Butterfly Habitat. The monarch usually returns to Michoacán, Mexico, approximately on 1 November, “El Dia de los Muertos” (The Day of the Dead). Some elders believe the returning monarchs are their ancestors returning to their homeland.

Flyways in Texas © Texas Parks and Wildlife and Texas Monarch Watch

Reforestation Efforts Are Underway in Mexico

McAllen, Texas, USA - In 2008, La Cruz Habitat Protection Project, Inc. (LCHPP) sponsored the planting of 300,000 trees in the highlands of Michoacán, Mexico. Some 200,000 trees are being planted in and near the Monarch Biosphere Reserve.

The butterfly cannot survive the open canopy of a denuded forest. Climate change with wet and cold conditions can threaten the butterfly. Illegal logging within the Mexican Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary has put the monarch at risk. Climate change with wet and cold conditions can settle on roosting trees. The monarch cannot survive a freeze. The La Cruz Habitat Protection Project helps to restore the forest and re-creates the optimal climate that the butterfly needs to survive in the Mexican Monarch Butterfly winter roosts.

To learn more about LCHPP’s reforestation project, please visit the links page on the Happy Tonics Web site.

La Cruz Habitat Protection Project, Inc.

Where Are My Monarchs?

Shell Lake, Wisconsin, USA – Happy Tonics received many calls and emails from members around the country asking, “Where are my monarchs?” Many of the monarchs arrived in Texas and the Southwest in March 2008. The weather was extremely cold and wet. The butterfly did not have sufficient time to fully develop to its reproductive stage because of climatic conditions. When the butterfly started its migration north, the monarch was challenged by not being able to leave its eggs on milkweed plants along the migration route.

It takes several generations to migrate north, where lower numbers or no monarchs were seen. If the butterflies did not have a chance to reproduce, think about what impact climate change potentially has on host and nectar plants throughout three countries, including Mexico, the USA, and Canada.

Many members in the USA reported their milkweed did not develop flowers, and they saw few or no caterpillars on the host plant (milkweed). In northwest Wisconsin, the weather was also cold and wet in the early summer, when monarchs would usually lay eggs on milkweed plants. Piecing together the migration north, we can speculate that weather patterns may be one reason why we didn’t see as many monarchs in 2008.

Monarch caterpillar on milkweed

Happy Tonics Member in the News

Alexandria, Virginia, USA – Recently, The Hearing Loss Association’s (HLA) magazine editor, Barbara Kelley, nominated Cindy Dyer of Dyer Design for the “Focus on People” award. Kelley interviewed Cindy under the guise of writing about professionals with hearing loss. What a surprise when Cindy was contacted by Oticon that she was selected as the grand prize winner in the adult category. Cindy volunteers as Happy Tonics graphic artist and also designs and creates our newsletter. She designs the HLA magazine as well.

Oticon was founded in 1904, in Denmark, by Hans Demant, whose wife was hearing impaired. Oticon makes many types of advanced digital hearing aids, some with artificial intelligence. Cindy received a $1,000 cash prize. Oticon also donated $1,000 to charities of her choice. She is honoring Happy Tonics and several other nonprofit organizations in a share of the donation award.

We are so proud of you Cindy, for teaching us to achieve our dreams and to practice good medicine by making a more beautiful and sustainable world!