Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 4 February 2024 – 1000 words/5 minutes
When we say that “science is never settled”, we mean that there are always new things to be discovered, new insights to be gained, new ways of looking at the same old things and thus, there will be disagreements, challenges to the old ways of seeing things, and controversies. That’s a big part of what makes science interesting to me and why I write about it.
Here at WUWT, I write, once or twice a year (or here), about the mighty and mysterious Monarch Butterfly and its incredible migration every Spring from the Central Mountains of Mexico north and east into the U.S. heartlands, and up into the plains of Canada and then, in the Fall, back again to Mexico. No butterfly that leaves Mexico ever lives to return, but some of their great-great-grandchildren do. There is a similar but much smaller migration on the West Coast of North America that ends in the coastal range of California.
In the worlds of entomology, ecological conservation and threatened and endangered species, there is general agreement on some points about monarchs
1) The number of monarch butterflies that have been migrating to overwintering grounds have sharply decreased from the very high numbers seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
2) Agricultural practices on the great plains of North America and elsewhere have changed to include the use of weed killing agents (Roundup) that have eliminated the once plentiful milkweeds that in the past co-inhabited fields of corn and soy beans. Milkweed is important as monarchs lay eggs only on milkweeds and monarch larva (caterpillars) only eat milkweed leaves.
3) There are a great many advocacy groups oriented to “saving the monarchs” – some are science-oriented and do monarch tracking, counting and tagging. Some encourage rearing monarchs or gathering and protecting monarch chrysalises until the butterfly emerges. Some encourage planting milkweeds and “butterfly gardens” and supply milkweed plants or seeds.
4) Commercial enterprises have arisen that mass breed monarchs (and other butterflies) either for scientific purposes (biology or nature classes) or for sale to be released at celebrations such as weddings. [examples, not recommendations: here and here ].
Well, that is part of the controversy. Read on to find out why.
What parts of the general view are controversial? All of them – yes, even the first one on migrating monarch populations.
Let’s start with #1, migrating monarch populations.
This is the short-term graph of the Western Migration, which is considered to be most imperiled. Previous years were a great deal higher. As is obvious, the 2020-2021 New Year’s count, which is meant to reflect the number of monarchs roosting on New Year’s Day and thus having survived the California’s winter months, was so close to zero that many monarch watchers thought the Western Migration had finally reached practical extinction.
The recovery seen in 2021-2022 was considered miraculous and is still largely unexplained, though experts have weighed in. Chip Taylor, of monarchwatch.org, makes the following observation:
“There have been many attempts to explain this rate of increase since it’s impossible for a cohort of 1849 overwintering monarchs to initiate a cascade of reproduction over 3-4 generations that would result in a large fall migratory population. This result is improbable since the number of surviving females would have been less than 600, and the known rates of mortality for all life stages indicate that rates of increase are strongly constrained. Clearly, the population growth in 2021 was initiated by thousands of females, perhaps 10s of thousands. The need to understand the increase leads to questions about where those females came from.”
Taylor then references Fisher et al. (2018) which states:
“Our results suggest that estimating the size of the western overwintering population in the future will be problematic, unless annual counts compensate for a shift in the distribution and a potential change in the number and location of occupied sites.Why is this important? The count of Western Monarch migration is done by volunteers that visit know roosting sites – known from past years – and the number of sites visited changes from year to year. (see the grey trace in the chart above). So, if the overwintering monarchs have moved to new unknown sites, they can’t be counted unless accidentally discovered. Fisher et al. posit that if the lower coastal roosting sites are too warm, the monarchs will roost higher up in the coastal range where it is cooler.
And that means that the counts of the Western Monarch migration may be less useful in determining the migrating population.
The same may be true for overwintering roosts in the Mexican mountains as well. The official report, “AREA OF FOREST OCCUPIED BY THE COLONIES OF MONARCH BUTTERFLIES IN MEXICO DURING THE 2022-2023 OVERWINTERING PERIOD”, includes this figure:
And gives their counting methodology as follows:
“Starting in December, each of the 13 overwintering sanctuaries inside and outside of the “Monarch Region” were visited twice a month; when a colony was found its location was established with a Garmin® Geopositioning device in UTM projection, with WGS84 datum. The perimeter of the forest occupied by the butterflies was determined from the tree that was found on the highest point of the slope, then we recorded the direction and distance of the consecutive and peripheral trees of the colony. The polygonal perimeter data was processed with the ArcView3.3 geographic information system (GIS) to establish the area occupied by the colonies (Vidal y Rendón-Salinas,2014). The Atlautla colony was also visited, whose area is not counted in the historical graph as it is located outside of the Monarch Region.”
It is clear that the overall Monarch Region is three times the size of the protected area. There are three known (and thus counted) areas of monarch overwintering roosts. But it is unknown how closely the 168,000 hectares (415,000 acres) is searched for new or novel roosts, or if such search is done at all, similar to the problem in California’s coastal mountains.
Even UNESCO seems to believe that there may be other overwintering roosts not inside of the Monarch Biosphere Reserve “Up to a billion monarch butterflies return annually, from breeding areas as far away as Canada, to land in close-packed clusters within 14 overwintering colonies in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. The property protects 8 of these colonies and an estimated 70% of the total overwintering population of the monarch butterfly’s eastern population.” [ emphasis nine – kh ]
If Fisher et al.’s hypothesis is correct, it will be necessary to do substantial searches of suitable eco-niches for overwintering monarchs, both in California and Mexico in order to establish more correct counts. If this is done, it can only add to the numbers of overwintering monarchs in both areas.
Bottom Line: On the issue of Overwintering Populations, #1 on our list of some points of general agreement, it is believed that overwintering populations are down, but the California experience in 2020-21 to 2021-22 shows that even this might not be true. Overwintering populations may have simply shifted their geographic positions slightly and escaped counting. In the case of California, there had to be substantial uncounted roosts.
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Author’s Comment:
When I dig in on almost any science topic, if I dig in deep enough, I find that ‘the science’ does not even agree with itself. The more honest a science field is, the more disagreement, the more disparate viewpoints, and more controversies, big and small, are found. This is healthy sign and a good omen.
Monarch Science, five or ten years ago, was one big happy family, everyone agreeing that the Monarch were doomed unless we humans changed our evil ways and cancelled Monsanto. This is no longer the case.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has a substack post today titled: “The Weaponization of “Scientific Consensus”. So far, consensus enforcement is not happening in entomology. But the consensus viewpoint is all one sees in the MSM.
More to follow on the remaining three points on our list.
Thanks for reading.
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Roundup is killing more than just the monarchs – people too
Got a number on how many it has killed? It is toxic so you don’t want it on you or in you. But like many toxins, it’s about statistics. It may increase your chance of getting a health problem- but everything about modern life is dangerous. So, I’ll wait for the number of people who it has killed- that is, proven to have killed.
I think it would be statistically higher to die of fumes of an externally combusting EV than from Roundup.
Or in a combusting EV.
William ==> That is certainly one of the major anti-herbicide talking points. To be true, it would need enough real evidence to overwhelm the evidence to the contrary. The U.S. EPA loves to ban things, and would ban Roundup too, if it could find the evidence. After nearly 50 years, that evidence still has not been found, despite a desperate effort to find or manufacture it.
The anti-glyposate theme is pushed by the Organic Food lobby, and exploited by predatory liability lawyers financed by the Church of Scientology.
Organic food is a rejection of science, being rather a mystical belief system with untestable assertions as to its benefits.
The IARC has found exactly one chemical/process to not be related to cancer, therefore being a reliable source of false positives for any lawyer wishing to sue anyone. Christopher Portier, a major influence at the IARC on the Roundup claim, is also a professional “expert witness” for the liability bar.
American Heart Association scientific conference in New Orleans, linked drinking sugar-sweetened beverages to 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 deaths from cardiovascular diseases, and 6,000 cancer deaths.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/roughly-180000-deaths-worldwide-linked-to-sugary-drink-consumption/#:~:text=The%20abstract%2C%20presented%20at%20an,diseases%2C%20and%206%2C000%20cancer%20deaths
David ==> All part of the manufactured Modern Science Controversy: The Sugar Wars.
There is ABSOLUTELY no evidence that “sugar”, or sugar sweetened beverages cause any cancers at all and no evidence that consuming sugar in any form leads to any increase in cancer deaths.
These AHA “studies” are all fantasy statistical monstrosities.
The anti-sugar headquarters is the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Pubic Health — an endless source of medical misinformation. “Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) research suggests that roughly 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide—including 25,000 Americans—are associated with the consumption of sugary drinks.”
So, some of the people who died of diabetes related issues also drank sugar-sweetened beverages. That’s the entirely of the association.
“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”
—Paracelsus,
“Everything gives you cancer”
Joe Jackson
David ==> Yes, according to the IARC , everything thing they test causes or is suspected of causing cancer of some type. I tried to find the one thing they decided didn;t cause cancer, but failed.
Sunlight causes cancer… and climate change. Ban it!
David ==> Didn’t some experts recently recommend a giant sun umbrella to save us all?
I think that high fructose corn syrup is the major cause of the increase in diabetes. It turns up in so many ingredient lists of prepared foods.
I seem to recall reading that somewhere but don’t have a relative link nor the interest in finding it again. It just makes sense that such a high increase in sugar intake would put a strain on the pancreas.
Nonsense. The major cause of cancer is being alive. No cadavers have ever contracted cancer. Not one.
Sucrose and Fructose forms of sugar both get converted to Glucose by our bodies chemical processes. Glucose is also naturally occurring in many foods.
Since it’s the sugar form directly used by our bodies, eating or drinking something high in glucose is the treatment for a diabetic having a hypoglycemic event or for a person who is hypoglycemic and has gone too long without eating.
The 15-15 treatment. Eat 15 grams of glucose then 15 minutes later check blood sugar to see if it’s above 69 mg/dl. If not, take another hit of 15 grams of glucose. Repeat until blood sugar tests high enough. If the person is unconscious, unresponsive, or otherwise unable to eat or drink with too low blood sugar, they need immediate medical attention.
Neither fructose nor sucrose puts any more “strain” on the body or is more or less harmful than the other. We possess the capability to handle both.
There are conditions where a person may have fructose or sucrose intolerance. I doubt it’s possible to be unable to properly digest/convert both to glucose. Being able to only eat foods with glucose would be difficult, if not “incompatible with life” as they say about some genetic disorders that result in stillbirth.
A human could not have glucose intolerance. That would definitely result in not living since glucose is one of the molecules that “fuels” our metabolism.
Diabetics need glucose like everyone else, their problem is either their pancreas produces too little or no insulin (Type 1) or their bodies cannot effectively use the insulin they do produce (Type 2). I wonder if anyone has ever looked into the problem being it’s their insulin that’s out of whack? There’s not just one common type of insulin. It’s been modified (and of course patented up the wazoo) many ways to alter how quickly it works and how long it lasts until another dose is needed.
If the pancreas of a person with adult onset Type 2 diabetes has altered so the insulin it makes is different than what it output before, that could be the problem. The body developed and grew up working with the insulin the pancreas started producing from its first islet cell in the developing fetus. If the insulin “formula” altered, then perhaps the body isn’t “tuned” to work with the new and not improved formula.
Greg ==> Yes, pretty spot-on, that! There is a terrific lot of nonsense going around about sugars.
Being anti-sugar is like being anti-carbon. We MUST have sugar to live, we ARE carbon creatures.
Unlike butterflies, humans must have essential amino acids and essential fatty acids in their diet, that’s why they’re called essential.
There are NO essential carbohydrates. We can be heathy and energetic without them.
Gary Taubes points out that the traditional Masai and Inuit diet is exclusively carnivore, yet cancer and diabetes were unknown before they started consuming a western diet.
Off topic, but interesting stuff.
As you say Kip, science is never settled…
I had a doctor opine that some people have a limit to what their pancreas can produce which gets lower with age. His wife has diabetes so his interest in the condition is heartfelt.
Putting high fructose corn syrup in just about every prepared food package exacerbates the situation. It seems to me that the food industry is trying to fatten up the population so we’ll eat more of their prepackaged crap. If someone is unlucky enough to have a lower producing pancreas then not only will they get fat, they’ll end up needing medication for the rest of their lives.
“Roundup is killing more than just the monarchs – people too”
So are the ambulance chasers.
We can’t quantify the number of lives ruined and associated premature deaths caused by these vile scum.
Driving on Rt. 95 through Philadelphia, almost every billboard is a slip and fall attorney advertising (pleading?) for lawsuits.
Their strategy: the defendant will settle out of court. Roundup is one of their many raisons d’être.
This is just another face of organized crime.
I agree. The count looks like an artifact of the counting process, not a meaningful change in real numbers.
Tom ==> It was commonly accepted that monarchs returned to the same locations to roost for the winter every year…the exact same locations, within sight range at least. Thus the counts have always been done at the same locations, more or less.
It seemed to be true — the volunteers returned to something like “mile marker # 28 along county road 46, 100 yards up the hill in the eucalyptus trees” and there or real close-by would be a roost of monarchs to count.
Now it turns out, from the California experience of 2020-2021/2021-2022 that what was commonly believed was wrong — that year, they MUST HAVE HAD other, unknown roosts.
Gotta love real science!
“It was commonly accepted that monarchs returned to the same locations to roost for the winter every year…the exact same locations, within sight range at least. Thus the counts have always been done at the same locations, more or less.”
Wow, thanks for that inclusion Mr. Hansen.
I am amazed at how much “science” starts with completely unproven assumptions!
Consider the most desirable pigeon roosting building in a major city downtown area. I suspect that if you killed every pigeon at that roost, and destroyed all of the existing eggs in the nests of that population, within 30 days the preferred roosting site would be filled with almost exactly the same number of pigeons as before.
(Sorry for the grisly example.)
Why do you think the monarch researchers assumed that it was the distant progeny of the previous occupants that re-filled a roost site, rather than just opportunistic monarchs that occupied a preferred site?
Personally, when I am riding the subway and reach my desired stop, I get off at that location and don’t keep riding the train!
pillageidiot ==> It is more analogous to the belief that the monarchs, four generations later, are returning to exactly the same tree or little grove of trees, rather than the now-seemingly-more-correct idea that thay are returning to the same type of eco-niche in a broader region.
We know far less about the monarch migration and their generations than is normally pretended. It is unlikely that one could track a departing monarch from Mexico, through three or four generations of off-spring, and then track the returnees to see if they cam back to the same tree/grove. We are, after all, talking about millions and millions of monarch butterflies.
Looks like the monarchs got hit hard by covid in 2020, but then were smart enough to get the vaccine in 2021. More sciencey proof the the jab works!
Ann ==> Ah-ha, the universal answer from the CDC and Fauci! (Nice touch, that.)
Monarches should not fly at night…early dawn or dusk….becuz the bats….the bats will get them.
somebody, please inform the monarches!
anti ==> Generally monarchs only fly in the daytime, and rest at night. In the migration time, they seem to use the position of the Sun to navigate.
Scientists found migrating birds in Europe using quantum mechanics principle via cells in their eyes to sense the earth’s magnetic field….sort of a compass.
anti ==> Gee, those birds are far smarter than I am — I don’t understand anything about quantum mechanics while birds have turned QM into a compass!
When I weed my garden I keep many milkweed plants.
Joseph ==> And the Monarchs would thank you, if they could.
Joseph ==> I too have encouraged the planting of native milkweeds. I like to have monarchs in my garden and like to collect monarch chrysalises and let my grandchildren watch them emerge and fly away.
Part 2 of this series will explain that maybe in the grand scheme of things, milkweeds are not the problem.
There’s no milkweeds in my Western Washington garden. But there are lots of pop-weeds, which are almost impossible to eradicate. And they are classed as noxious weeds.
Jim ==> PoP-weeds or PoT-weeds?
Whenever I see a huge drop in observed cases in 2020-2021, my first thought is that this is a pandemic effect.
People went out less, to fewer places and for less time.
That may be accounted for, but the coincidence of years is notable.
MCourtney ==> The Thanksgiving and New Year’s counts in California are pretty well documented, including the number of teams out and counting. The down year had more sites counted then the previous year. The next year (2021-2022), expecting an even greater decline, they counted more sites. Since this is all a volunteer effort, loosely organized and directed, it is “catch-as-catch-can”.
A good idea, the pandemic, but as sites visited were UP, doesn’t look like it holds.
I believe it was Feynman who said “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Denis ==> Yes,but it is not just that. In this case, well established experience became “settled science” (or at least, good enough for us science) and no one has looked further....
Now they will have too look and look again.
Early autumn 1981. Point Pelee, Ontario. Trees covered in Monarchs. Clap your hands, once. A rising cloud of orange red. Awesome.
Ed ==> Yes, a movable roost, gathering for the Fall migration to Mexico. Only the super generation (the one that migrates) has this behavior.
Savor the memory.
Wish you had a video (oh, no cell phone video cameras in 1981!)
How do Monarchs escape the wind turbines?
Dennis ==> The understanding is that monarchs don’t fly that high normally. Hub heights of 90 meters (~180 feet) with a blade diameter of 30 meters (~150 feet) so the danger area is over 60 meters aobve ground level — 180 feet.
The threat to butterflies of all types is unclear.
I can’t help but wonder about the sightings of monarch butterflies along the Front Range where I live in Colorado. There was no question in my mind that we were seeing more than usual. Of course, this was just possibly something random, but I tend to think it was a real change. I thought possibly the increased moisture through last summer made the plant growth more suitable for them. I have always been amazed and curious about migrations such salmon spawning and butterflies. It is not surprising that variations in migration behavior could give the impression of either abundance or scarcity. The plague spur throat grasshoppers have always been a mystery to me that we will never get to know the answer as to why and what they were doing. The variable migration of cod schools was always a mystery and probably led people to believe there were still cod when they were actually nearly gone. The observations of salmon spawning in creeks in California where they hadn’t been seen for some time may be simply related to a couple of good water years. I am sure some animals are absolutely vulnerable, but I also know there are some animals that have seemingly supernatural resilience.
Steve ==> And all very good points and observations. In actual fact, population dynamics tend towards chaos — as in Chaos Theory — as described somewhat in this article. The easiest phenomenon to see are the boom-bust cycles in many species, but all the aspects of chaos can be found i living populations: even stability can and is a function of Chaotic behaviors.
See my Chaos series here from many years ago:
Chaos & Climate – Part 1: Linearity
Chaos & Climate – Part 2: Chaos = Stability
Chaos & Climate – Part 3: Chaos & Models
Chaos & Climate – Part 4: An Attractive Idea
Lorenz validated (at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.)
Thanks! Very interesting stuff.
Steve ==> Thanks — I think it is interesting too.
I hadn’t seen any monarchs in Colorado until the past couple of years and it’s a nice thing whatever the cause. On the other hand, sad to say, grass hoppers have been out of control with hundreds in my yard during the summer peak.
Yes, grasshoppers have been pretty dense in open space, but it is patchy.
Very nice Kip. Why all the focus a the winter habitat and not the summer?
Bob ==> The winter habitat is where they roost in big bunches — and can thus be counted (estimated). In the Summer they are spread from Florida into Canada, west to the Rockies, and East to the Atlantic shore. The only Summer counting they can do is citizen science, reporting sightings on the web, etc. Several good efforts being made (see Monarch Watch).
Out West, the monarchs spread from Mexico all the way up into Canada on the west side of the Rockies. Again too spread out t count other than the random sighting method.
The “plant milkweeds” and “butterfly gardens” are the actions promoted to improve the Summer habitat. Part 3 will cover=some of this (Part 2 should be up soon)
You do realize that Monarch butterflies are not limited to North America?
https://monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/global-distribution
This sounds like the same hype over regional population differences like Polar bears.
And wonder of wonders,
Monsanto-friendly bureaucratic pestssomeone was going for Roundup resistant bees back in 2012.So… do you guys still believe
subsidies junkies and kulaks already scheduled for reeducation campsHeroic And Independent American Farmers would be able to save you (or even themselves) when the agriculture crisis finally happens?Of course, it will happen totally because evil oldthinkers who unbellyfeel failed to praise their lord and saviour Al Gore enough, so the angry ManBearPig awakened… rather than, say, because most pollinators and carnivorous birds are rendered near-extinct — but then, «oldthinkers who unbellyfeel» should know how this works by now.
Brief points as I have been into this several times:
I view the flapping as just another case of anti-human activists failing to do homework, in their drive to reduce population of humans.
There are many cases of human activity increasing populations of other creatures.
One noted in SW BC is small worms/snakes/slugs that spend most of their time hidden under leaves, especially ones fallen on tilled ground.
To most people the;
– supposedly rare tail-dropping slug isn’t recognized as different from other slugs
– ‘sharp-tailed snake’ looks like an earthworms, and it stays out of sunlight most of the year (reported sightings of it multiply every time there is publicity).
(Yes, that version of slug shrinks a band on its tail so a predator can tear it off leaving the slug alive.)