Joe Brown, horticulture coordinator for the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, plants milkweed seeds to help save the monarch butterfly on Dec. 19. The facility planted a milkweed garden for noncaptive butterflies that drew monarchs. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
Re: “Rescue strategy hatching for dwindling monarch butterflies,” Dec. 27 news story.
It is laudable that people are concerned about the loss of monarch butterflies and their milkweed habitat. Barely mentioned in the article as one of the principal causes of this is the intensification of industrial agriculture due to reliance on corn ethanol and biodiesel.
Seventy percent of Iowa corn is now burned in our gas tanks. This has led to a huge loss of conservation acres, waterway and streamside habitat. All kinds of pollinators, ground nesting birds and the supporting biomass have been destroyed. It is a catastrophe in the Midwestern grain belt, a rich biologic area supporting a diversity of wildlife.
Roadside ditches and power-line right-of-way milkweed plantings are putting a Band-Aid on the problem. We need a rewrite of the federal farm bill so the public interest is recognized and not the ag industrial complex — which, by the way, is not serving the individual farmer particularly well these days.
Jeff MacDonald, Boulder
This letter was published in the Dec. 31 edition.
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