When I was a kid, I would see them all the time since I live on the edge of their migration path. It's been ages since I've seen any. Sad really.
I have a monarch habitat in my yard here in So CA where I grow milkweed annually. I saw 4 today in my yard. They're not gone, but their habitats are declining.
SoCal here too. A few years ago, the local nursery was giving out milkweed for people to plant in their gardens. We did that, then a couple of years later they apologized because they had given out the wrong type of milkweed, and it was actually worse than not having it at all. Pretty fucked up. Anyway, we used to see a ton of them come through, the last couple of years it seems like I see a couple dozen or so at best.
San Diego? That happened here too lol. They gave out Tropical Milkweed mixed with wild flowers lol.
SoCal most common native milkweeds below with links inside to nurseries carrying it, plant in January:
California Milkweed:
https://calscape.org/Asclepias-californica-(California-Milkweed)
Showy Milkweed:
https://calscape.org/Asclepias-speciosa-(Showy-Milkweed)
Mexican Narrow Leaf Milkweed
https://calscape.org/Asclepias-fascicularis-(Narrow-Leaf-Milkweed)
I'm in northern OC. Along the route. I found this nursery, https://californianativeplants.com/, out on the Ortega Highway out of San Juan Capistrano and they have fantastic California natives and knowledgeable staff. They aren't on the list, but they had the correct varieties last time I hit them up. I don't own stock or anything, I just really like it, even though it's a bit of a drive for me. They've set me straight on several things I had been doing wrong.
It feels like no species in the US is what I’d call safe.
Plenty of them are safe. Unfortunately, most of the safe ones are also invasive.
You can't pessimistic enough, we are going through a major extinction time period in the history of earth. Say bye to the majority of species we know, any mammal larger than a rat, most birds, most trees, most fish, anything that needs cold weather.
Uh ohh. We're mammals larger than a rat
Other monkeys should have spent their time making air conditioning instead of living in harmony with nature—idiots. /s
Trump will make sure they are removed from that list. I can think of three ways:
- Policies that hasten their extinction.
- Disallow agencies from changing any animal's conservation status.
- Deport those filthy Mexican immigrants freeloading on all our American milkweed.
I remember how common they were when I was a kid in the 1980s. How depressing. It's a harbinger, of course.
I've murdered thousands of these butterflies irl, AMA.
why?
During my undergrad, I assisted a Doctoral candidate who was researching Monarch flight mechanics. As a part of the experimentation, I had to occasionally cull colonies when they caught bacterial infections. It was heartbreaking and I hated it. I would never do it again.
Hello, FBI? This guy right here.
Can you elaborate a bit on this zinger?
Is the FBI more interested in the routine extinguishing of animal life for science and agriculture, or the self-realization that helped me as a person?
Clearly they are after the mass monarch murdering psychopath who (likely singlehandedly) made these butterflies go extinct.
/s
Hopefully such research can mostly be done via simulation these days.
That's sadly still very far away. We're slowly able to fully simulate very simple organisms, but butterflies are a lot more complex AFAIK.
How unfortunate.
I thought they were already protected. I have clear memories of my grandparents telling me about how it was illegal to kill them and how rare they were over 30 years ago.
the usa and sentences with "monarch" and "threatening"; name a more iconic duo.
The American people will feel the poisonous sting of the mighty monarch.
They are easy to protect now that they live in a 5 gallon glass jar and migrate from one side to the other depending on the AC situation. Probably just threatened then?
I love that the town I live in seems to consistently mow around milkweed
I started doing the same
News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.