In July, I excitedly await the arrival of the monarch butterfly. From the forests of Mexico, the second or third generation of offspring are finding their way to Pennsylvania. Their flight is captivating, how they flit from flower to flower, intent on finding one thing: Milkweed. That’s it, the secret ingredient, the only plant on which they lay their eggs to continue the next generation of monarchs.
If we don’t have healthy milkweed, they die. It’s that simple.
If power companies and municipalities spray herbicide, right as monarchs are arriving and laying eggs, they die. Have you noticed the large brown swaths of dead everything along the roads? Your power company and municipality at work.
If homeowners spray an insecticide within 10 football fields of a stand of milkweed, caterpillars are poisoned and die. Out of 400 eggs that a female monarch butterfly lays, only four make it to become a butterfly. And if we poison their food, they will never survive.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature just listed the monarch butterfly as endangered. The end. Kaput. No more.
Can we change? Can we redefine what roadways and gardens and lawns should be, not just to humanity, but to our insect brothers and sisters? Can we, as the Bible says, be better stewards of the Earth?
This interconnected web of life includes humanity. And what we do to them, we do to ourselves eventually. Make a change, be different, plant milkweed. And nature, in all its glory, will astound you with her gifts.
Patricia Flowers Jacobina
Ligonier Township