Loudoun fourth-grader plays major role in effort to save the monarch butterfly

Carter Steadman prepares to release a monarch butterfly in his backyard way station garden.  (Caitlin Gibson/The Washington Post)
On a recent afternoon, the dining room of the Steadman family’s stately home in South Riding was filled with books, notepads, family photos — and roughly 200 insects.
Atop a wooden cabinet, a large net enclosure was filled with bunches of milkweed plants and scores of bright green, yellow and black striped monarch butterfly caterpillars. Half a dozen newly formed chrysalises, the delicate casings that enclose the caterpillars as they turn into adult butterflies, were taped securely to the shelves of a nearby bookcase. In a mesh cage on the dining room table, a single orange-and-black monarch butterfly softly flapped its wings.
The elaborate arrangement was the work of 9-year-old Carter Steadman, a fourth-grader at Hutchison Farm Elementary in South Riding and a diehard “critter lover,” in the words of his mother, Sarah Steadman. The young naturalist was first inspired to help monarch butterflies nearly two years ago, when a second-grade teacher taught the class about the life stages of the monarch and explained that the delicate creatures were increasingly threatened by changes to their environment.
“I thought maybe it could be easy to help them, and maybe I could try this,” Carter said while sitting at the dining room table-turned-monarch nursery.
It’s no small commitment. The net container filled with milkweed must be cleaned nightly. As the caterpillars move through their life stages, they are relocated accordingly into separate areas where they will be safe. New chrysalises are taped to the bookshelf until they harden. Once hardened, they are tied snugly to the top of another mesh enclosure. Once they “eclose” — or emerge from the chrysalis — the butterflies are escorted to yet another net container until their wings dry, after which they are released.
“It’s very detailed work for a child his age,” Sarah Steadman said. “He’s very dedicated to it.”
Carter set out to help the threatened butterflies as part of the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s inaugural monarch butterfly campaign. The effort aimed to bolster local butterfly populations by planting monarch “way stations” filled with milkweed, which serves as breeding and feeding grounds for the monarchs, and encouraging Loudoun residents such as Carter to raise and release the insects.
After Carter’s first season of butterfly-raising last year, he released more than a dozen monarchs into the wild. This year, he has already released nearly 100, and twice as many are being nurtured through their life stages in the family dining room.
The devoted young volunteer also spent many hours during his summer vacation tending to a monarch way station at his school, updating his “Butterfly Buddy” Web site with his mom, and leading library workshops to help other kids learn about the butterflies.
“He knows so much . . . it’s fabulous to see his passion and his excitement, it’s truly infectious,” said Nicole Hamilton, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy president. “Seeing him interact with other kids and talk about monarch butterflies in terms that not only he relates to, but that his peers and kids younger than him relate to, is just fabulous.”
The Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy launched its first monarch butterfly campaign last year, after mounting concern over the dwindling migratory population of monarchs, which are well known for their impressive annual migration from Mexico to the United States. In recent years, the insects have become increasingly vulnerable to environmental changes along their migration routes, including scarce feeding and breeding grounds because of the use of herbicides and genetically modified crops, as well as the illegal logging of the Mexican forests where the insects winter.
Despite the challenges, there is reason to hope, Hamilton said: In an August butterfly count in Loudoun, 70 monarchs were spotted, a dramatic improvement over last year’s tally of seven.
“It’s still nowhere near as high as it’s been in some years, when we’ve had up to 150 or more,” Hamilton said. “But it’s not as bad as it was last year, at least.”
She hopes those numbers will climb with the help of the organization’s expanding campaign. In addition to planting monarch way stations and encouraging citizen involvement, Hamilton said, she is working with Dominion Power and the Virginia Department of Transportation on plans to turn right-of-way property and highway medians into butterfly-friendly territory.
“We want, as they said, to create something that Virginians will be proud of,” Hamilton said. “And there will be an educational element, so people understand why medians won’t be mowed. That will have a huge impact.”
Monarch butterflies, along with their fellow pollinators, also got a boost this summer from the White House, which issued a presidential memorandum in June calling for protective measures for butterflies and other pollinators.
Noting that populations of domestic pollinators — including bees, birds, bats and butterflies — have been falling for many years, the memorandum directed U.S. government agencies to take additional steps to help protect and strengthen the creatures that serve as “critical contributors to our nation’s economy, food system, and environmental health.”
The memorandum came as welcome news to wildlife advocates and enthusiasts, Hamilton said.
“It really demonstrated that there is a national interest and a national interest for monarchs as well as pollinators, and a recognition that these species are really playing a strong role in our environment and our habitats and our own food supply,” Hamilton said. “I think that’s a really great step in the right direction.”
Meanwhile, Carter Steadman is doing his best to help this year’s monarch campaign surpass last year’s total of 2,500 butterflies released. So far, about 900 monarchs have been released by volunteers participating in the campaign. At the same time last year, that number was closer to 400, Hamilton said. Most butterflies — including the 200 still developing at the Steadman home — will be released in the coming weeks.
Carter hopes that sharing his passion for raising the butterflies will encourage friends and neighbors to do what they can to help — even if they’re unlikely to invite hundreds of caterpillars into their homes, or don’t have property to plant a way station.
“We’ve been telling everyone about the monarch problem,” he said. “Even if you live in a townhouse and can’t plant a way station, you can tell people and spread the word.”
His parents and big sister, Samantha, 13, have encouraged his devotion to his cause — which is a good thing, he said, because he has no plans to slow down. When the monarchs return next spring, he’ll be ready to start the whole process again.
“I love that I have more monarchs this time. I can handle more, I can release more, and more practice means more experience, which means I’m getting better,” he said. “You’re never too young to make a difference.”


Describe how best to protect insect pollinators like bees and butterflies.

There continues to be a significant loss of pollinators, like bees and butterflies, that are critical to our food supply.  They need to be protected to ensure sustainability of food production systems, to avoid additional economic impact and to protect the health of the environment.  Bees and butterflies are particularly threatened by neonicotinoid pesticides.  People can help by planting bee and butterfly-friendly plants, like nectar-rich flowers, milkweed and dill, and not using harmful pesticides. Relevant documents will include butterflies.

Find information online that addresses this environmental question.

Monarch butterflies’ migration is part relay race, part obstacle course — and full of danger

Life is hard for the modern American butterfly. Monarch butterflies, the iconic American insect, are declining in North America, and scientists are scrambling to uncover the mystery of their disappearance during their thousands of miles of migration.
Step aside, Shark Week; it’s
The authors find that the greatest declines for monarchs may be occurring during their winters in Mexico and the following migration north to the Texas and Gulf States. Migration mortality, as it’s called, is creating a disconnect between the large numbers of monarchs produced in the United States and Canada and the smaller numbers reported in Mexico.
“The migration itself might be the problem,” said Anurag Agrawal, James Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell University and lead author of the paper. In past 25 years, Mexican forests where the monarchs live have experienced a steep decline. But the butterflies face many struggles during the long international journey.
“Twenty million monarchs die in car accidents every year on their way to Mexico,” Agrawal said. Freeways and cities across the United States bisect the butterfly habitat and reduce the areas of appropriate pit stops. In addition, habitat loss, pollution, pesticides and climate change are also threatening the tiger-striped insect.
When resting between trips, monarchs are a mosaic of orange and black, often appearing so thickly in trees that they appear to be a cloud of gently blinking leaves. The monarchs can be so dense that scientists and volunteers count them per hectare, the area of land they cover, rather than individually.
Imagine having such a density of anything. Imagine an acre of bunnies.
Monitoring monarch migrations is a huge effort involving three countries, more than 3,000 miles and myriad citizen scientists, along with large organizations such as World Wildlife Fund and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and a lot of butterfly researchers.
Andy Davis, assistant research scientist of the University of Georgia, examines the insects’ stress responses by gently placing chubby striped caterpillars under a small sensor that lets him and his team watch the bug’s tiny tubular heart beat.
“You can get it similar to the heart-rate monitor at the hospital, you know: Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep,” Davis said. Then he plays the sounds of highway traffic. He and his colleagues found that, not unlike humans, caterpillars are distressed by short bursts of traffic noise. However, after long periods of chronic noise, the caterpillars became accustomed or desensitized. It’s not yet clear what this means for the butterfly’s long-distance migration, but the research, published last month in Biology Letters, could be a piece of the puzzle of their decline.
Monarchs migrate in multiple generations. An egg laid in the Midwest will hatch into a tiny worm that is small enough to curl up comfortably on the “m” of an M&M candy. It will grow, voraciously munching milkweed for a few weeks, before transforming into a butterfly. This butterfly will then travel a little farther south, lay more eggs and die after living for a month. That butterfly’s daughter, however, could be in the overwintering generation that makes it to Mexico, and instead of living one month, the daughter butterfly could live eight months.
Agrawal explains that this long-lived generation is different: The butterflies do not lay eggs or eat milkweed in the winter; they sun and drink nectar in Mexico. After what seems like a long vacation, they fly north to Gulf States such as Texas to breed and die. These next generations will go back to being short-lived and continue their generational steppingstone migration north.
“Having that final generation live three times longer than your parent, if we think about that in humans, that’s pretty wild,” said Hidetoshi Inamine, a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University and co-author of the Science study.
Decline of milkweed in recent years is
Scientists, conservationists and concerned citizens are working to determine how best to restore the monarch to its previous glory. Inamine has milkweed in his Pennsylvania backyard, so he can watch the monarchs. Want a front-row seat to a total life change? Plant a milkweed and watch with childlike amazement as a pudgy, sticky caterpillar explodes into a leggy, delicate butterfly.
For now, it can’t hurt to
Monarch lives are complicated by battles with a changing planet across thousands of miles of travel each year. The butterflies are a


A successful first year for Loudoun’s monarch butterfly campaign

insects’ milkweed breeding grounds. Northern Virginia residents can’t do much about climate change or illegal logging, Hamilton said, but they can definitely help the butterflies by planting milkweed and creating much-needed breeding and feeding sites. Many of the campaign volunteers told her that they have often responded to calls for action to help threatened species that are far away, such as wolves or polar bears, Hamilton said. “But with this campaign, they felt like they could really make a difference that was tangible — they could see it,” she said. “And as they talked to their neighbors and friends, it really took off on its own.” At the beginning of the year, the campaign had 20 monarch way stations at schools and community sites across the county, Hamilton said. By the end of August, there were more than 60. About 3,000 milkweed plants were added to the community. Hamilton is planning to meet with Loudoun public school officials this month to discuss expanding the campaign. This year, 20 schools participated, she said, but she would love to see a way station at every public school in the county. “That would make Loudoun County the first school system in the United States with a way station at every school,” she said. “What a fine example to set.” Ultimately, Hamilton said, she would like to see the campaign spread beyond Loudoun. “This year was all about building that foundation and getting our materials and our handouts together, and we didn’t really have enough time to look beyond our county borders,” she said. It’s only one garden, but it’s intended to deliver a message to residents across Prince William. “Please do this at home,” Hosen said. “It’s a demonstration to say that gardening for wildlife can be very attractive . . . while providing habitat for butterflies who are in big trouble.” The Prince William Conservation Alliance is also planning to publish a field guide, in print and online, to help gardeners learn how to create butterfly-friendly gardens, Hosen said. Hamilton said she has received inquiries from wildlife enthusiasts in West Virginia and other parts of Northern Virginia who heard about the Loudoun monarch campaign and wanted to join in it or replicate it. “We’re going to help them with that,” she said. “I’m willing to give anyone what they need to replicate this and make it better and take it even further.”

The goal of the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s inaugural monarch butterfly campaign was to raise and release 2,013 of the threatened orange-and-black butterflies — a symbolic number to match the first year of an initiative that the organization hopes to expand.
This month, as the campaign came to a close, the conservancy announced that participants had well exceeded the goal. About 2,500 monarch butterflies were released across Loudoun County over the summer, organization President Nicole Hamilton said.
For years, Hamilton has tracked the number of monarch butterflies she sees in Loudoun — an annual tally that has steadily declined. This year, the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy launched its first organized effort to help bolster the butterflies’ presence in Northern Virginia, focusing on educating the community and creating monarch “way stations” — gardens of milkweed plants and wildflowers that serve as breeding and feeding sites for the insects.
Hundreds of people across the county got involved in the effort, Hamilton said.
“We were thrilled. We definitely didn’t expect quite so much of an outpouring,” she said. “As we started to do the different educational programs and engage more people in their communities, folks just really latched on to it, and could see that there’s a chance to make a difference.”
Monarch butterflies, famed for their extraordinary annual migration between Mexico and the United States, have been increasingly threatened by several factors, including changing climate patterns, illegal logging in the Mexican forests where the butterflies spend the cold winter and the widespread use of herbicide sprays in the United States that kill the insects’ milkweed breeding grounds.
Northern Virginia residents can’t do much about climate change or illegal logging, Hamilton said, but they can definitely help the butterflies by planting milkweed and creating much-needed breeding and feeding sites. Many of the campaign volunteers told her that they have often responded to calls for action to help threatened species that are far away, such as wolves or polar bears, Hamilton said.
“But with this campaign, they felt like they could really make a difference that was tangible — they could see it,” she said. “And as they talked to their neighbors and friends, it really took off on its own.”
At the beginning of the year, the campaign had 20 monarch way stations at schools and community sites across the county, Hamilton said. By the end of August, there were more than 60. About 3,000 milkweed plants were added to the community.
Hamilton is planning to meet with Loudoun public school officials this month to discuss expanding the campaign. This year, 20 schools participated, she said, but she would love to see a way station at every public school in the county.
“That would make Loudoun County the first school system in the United States with a way station at every school,” she said. “What a fine example to set.”
Ultimately, Hamilton said, she would like to see the campaign spread beyond Loudoun.
“This year was all about building that foundation and getting our materials and our handouts together, and we didn’t really have enough time to look beyond our county borders,” she said.
Hamilton said she is confident that there is interest among wildlife enthusiasts in neighboring jurisdictions. Her observation was echoed by Kim Hosen, executive director of the Prince William Conservation Alliance, who said the organization has created a one-acre butterfly garden with host plants such as milkweed that will be waiting to receive the migrating insects in the spring.
It’s only one garden, but it’s intended to deliver a message to residents across Prince William.
“Please do this at home,” Hosen said. “It’s a demonstration to say that gardening for wildlife can be very attractive . . . while providing habitat for butterflies who are in big trouble.”
The Prince William Conservation Alliance is also planning to publish a field guide, in print and online, to help gardeners learn how to create butterfly-friendly gardens, Hosen said.
Hamilton said she has received inquiries from wildlife enthusiasts in West Virginia and other parts of Northern Virginia who heard about the Loudoun monarch campaign and wanted to join in it or replicate it.
“We’re going to help them with that,” she said. “I’m willing to give anyone what they need to replicate this and make it better and take it even further.”


Pollinators and the power of flowers

A monarch butterfly on a tithonia blossom in Deb Soule’s garden.  ( Deb Soule)
Each sunflower I pick is full of bees, sometimes eight or 10 per blossom. Most are still and quiet, as if sleeping off a sweet meal. Before I bring the flowers indoors, I flick each bee off with my finger, to fly in search of more nectar.
This year I’m growing and selling lots of bouquets locally. Flowers are just a sideline for our vegetable business, but they serve another purpose as well. Our melons, cucumbers, squash and other fruiting crops never lack for the pollinators they need for an abundant harvest, and picking flowers gives me a good view of their numbers.
The catmint (which blooms all summer), lavender, shasta daisies, salvia and many others are always full of bees, butterflies and other helpers. Rarely does any insect damage them, although some are mysterious. For instance, the snapdragons are full of tiny, glossy, black beetles that hide inside their cave-like petals. They’re always locked in pairs, even while moving. After consulting my old 1951 beetle guide (“How to Know the Beetles,” by H.E. Jaques) I’ve decided they are  Stilbus apicalis , a species of shining flower beetle, and they’re just living and mating in the snapdragons. Be my guest, I tell them.
Recently I compared notes with my friend Deb Soule, author of the book “How to Move Like a Gardener.” At her farm in West Rockport, Maine, Deb grows plants that are hand-processed and go into the tinctures of her Avena Botanicals. Visitors can stroll the lush flower gardens during open hours or workshops.
She, too, values catmint, not only for its use in herbal teas, but for its bee-attracting powers. Also, it’s ready and blooming when the ruby-throated hummingbird (another important pollinator) arrives in early summer. Butterflies and bees alike flock to her echinacea, used to make a mild immune-system stimulant, and to lavender, which helps treat respiratory infections and poor digestion. Deb and I both grow joe-pye weed, a giant purple-flowered native, named (the story goes) for an Indian herbalist in Massachusetts who passed his wisdom on to settlers. The plant is also called gravel root, for its use in treating kidney stones.
Among Deb’s bee-attracting favorites are anise hyssop, bee balm, black cohosh, borage and feverfew. Bee balm is also on her hummingbird list, along with cardinal flower, evening primrose, marsh mallow, lungwort and Solomon’s seal.
People grow flowers for many reasons, including their beauty. Those concerned about the fate of bees are especially inclined to plant them and to avoid toxic sprays that could harm any pollinators that visit. Possible causes of colony collapse disorder in bees include both pesticides and loss of habitat, so a poison-free yard bursting with blooms makes a double contribution to this cause. The same goes for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have declined in recent years.
One plant that Deb especially loves is tithonia, also called Mexican sunflower. Its gorgeous flowers are somewhere between bright scarlet and deep orange. “I love tithonia, too,” I told her, “but it doesn’t work in bouquets. It’s droopy and fragile. Is it medicinal?” “No,” she replied. “It’s not good for anything, but I plant whole hedgerows of it because the monarch butterflies, ruby-throated hummingbirds and native bees all love it.” Reason enough, I’d say.
Tip of the week
Removing fading flowers — dead-heading — will drastically improve the groomed look of a plant, prevent seediness and often promote reblooming. Use hand pruners to remove the flower back to a set of healthy leaves or take off entire stalks, depending on the flower structure. Wear thick gloves when dead-heading roses. — Adrian Higgins
Damrosch’s latest book is “The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook.”


Ten things in nature that could vanish before your kids see them

(Johanna James-Heinz/AP) Rusty patched bumblebees These big, fat and cute bees were once the most common bees in North America, buzzing across millions of acres in the United States, sucking nectar and moving pollen from the male to female parts of plants, making them one of America's most efficient pollinators, worth about $3 billion per year to U.S. agriculture. Now they have lost nearly 90 percent of their range. (Billy Hefton/Enid News & Eagle via AP) Monarch butterflies (Leila Navidi/The Star Tribune via AP) Polar bears Being the largest predator on land is not easy. A fully grown male polar bear weighs well more than half a ton, and has a big belly to fill. With ice melting because of global warming and the seal blubber it needs to survive drifting away, polar bears are struggling to survive. They can eat as much as 100 pounds of fat in a single meal, the report says. Many drown attempting to swim to ice floes in search of food. (AP/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Marvin Moriarty) Little brown bats (Carl de Souza/AFP/GettyImages) Great white sharks (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP) Mountain yellow-legged frogs Frogs (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP) North Pacific right whales These whales are some of the most endangered animals on Earth. Some estimates say only 30 remain in U.S. waters, but there's no way of knowing for sure. Once they were plentiful, but hunting that lasted from the 1800s until the 1960s took about 30,000, and now the whales are classified as endangered throughout its range, according to NOAA. (Donald Owen/California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection/Bugwood.org) White bark pine White bark does a lot for nature. It provides shelter for numerous animals and birds and helps grizzlies get fat and healthy off its pine seeds. But nature isn't giving back. The species is being ravaged by a beetle that's spreading because of global warming, and it's being attacked by a fungus. In the western United States and Canada, its historic range, 85 percent of white bark has been wiped out. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the pine is worthy of endangered species protection but hasn't been listed because other species are a higher priority. (Kim Toulouse/Nevada Department of Wildlife via AP) The greater sage-grouse (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times) Snake River sockeye salmon There was a time when 40,000 of these fish with a

In their losing battle with television and digital devices, conservationists have urged parents to get the kiddies to the great outdoors. But even if parents managed to pull their children away from cellphones, what would they find in America's wilderness?
A new report by the Endangered Species Coalition, an alliance of 10 environmental activist groups, says they'll see fewer things in nature than their parents did. Many are listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Here are 10 plants and animals the groups say your children might never see.
(Johanna James-Heinz/AP)
Rusty patched bumblebees
These big, fat and cute bees were once the most common bees in North America, buzzing across millions of acres in the United States, sucking nectar and moving pollen from the male to female parts of plants, making them one of America's most efficient pollinators, worth about $3 billion per year to U.S. agriculture. Now they have lost nearly 90 percent of their range.
(Billy Hefton/Enid News & Eagle via AP)
Monarch butterflies
When farmers spray pesticides to protect corn and soy they've planted throughout the Midwest, the chemicals also fall on a food that's cherished by monarch caterpillars: milkweed. Monarch caterpillars are creepy and black and yellow striped early in life, but eventually they become one of the prettiest butterflies to take flight. Up to a billion monarchs once fluttered about from Canada to Mexico, but lately they've been grounded; only 33 million remain.
(Leila Navidi/The Star Tribune via AP)
Polar bears
Being the largest predator on land is not easy. A fully grown male polar bear weighs well more than half a ton, and has a big belly to fill. With ice melting because of global warming and the seal blubber it needs to survive drifting away, polar bears are struggling to survive. They can eat as much as  100 pounds of fat in a single meal, the report says. Many drown attempting to swim to ice floes in search of food.
(AP/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Marvin Moriarty)
Little brown bats
These little creatures are about to head back into caves for their annual hibernation. Chances are, many of them won't come back out. There's a monster lurking in those caves that attacks numerous species of bats, but kills little browns more than most. It's called White Nose Syndrome, a fungus that covers the winged animals when their hearts slow and their bodies go cold during their deep sleep, wreaking havoc on their bodies. The government count of bats killed by white nose was nearly 7 million — two years ago in the Northeast, Southeast and parts of the Midwest. In Pennsylvania, little brown bat mortality was nearly 100 percent.
(Carl de Souza/AFP/GettyImages)
Great white sharks
Great white sharks are partially warm-blooded animals that slice through the water at up to 35 mph. But their offspring, shark pups, can't outrun commercial gill nets that pull them up as by-catch — creatures caught by fishermen who are targeting something else, such as tuna. Fishing for great whites is illegal because their numbers are dwindling due to mortality at the hands of humans, but there's no limit on the by-catch in nursery areas off California and Mexico in the gulf, unintentionally killing up to 200 young sharks per year, the reports says. Great whites grow slowly and mature late on their way to living as long as 70 years, "but low reproductive rates, small populations, and by-catch keep this species at risk of extinction," the study says.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)
Mountain yellow-legged frogs
Frogs
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP)
North Pacific right whales
These whales are some of the most endangered animals on Earth. Some estimates say only 30 remain in U.S. waters, but there's no way of knowing for sure. Once they were plentiful, but hunting that lasted from the 1800s until the 1960s took about 30,000, and now the whales are classified as endangered throughout its range, according to NOAA.
(Donald Owen/California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection/Bugwood.org)
White bark pine
White bark does a lot for nature. It provides shelter for numerous animals and birds and helps grizzlies get fat and healthy off its pine seeds. But nature isn't giving back. The species is being ravaged by a beetle that's spreading because of global warming, and it's being attacked by a fungus. In the western United States and Canada, its historic range, 85 percent of white bark has been wiped out. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the pine is worthy of endangered species protection but hasn't been listed because other species are a higher priority.
(Kim Toulouse/Nevada Department of Wildlife via AP)
The greater sage-grouse
The greater sage-grouse is the poster bird of the conservationist movement. Its range, which once covered 297 million acres across more than a dozen Western states, has given way to development and natural gas exploration, and is now in the path of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. But federal agencies strongly disagree with conservationists over whether projects should be halted to protect the bird. "U.S. Fish and Wildlife supports efforts to keep the greater sage-grouse off the endangered species list" by managing its habitat better, an agency Web post says.
(Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)
Snake River sockeye salmon
There was a time when 40,000 of these fish with a green head and red body returned to spawn in the Rocky Mountains. But that was before four federal dams blocked its path. In 1992, one fish made it back. Since that time, federal, state and tribal fish managers have spent $40 million in an attempt to restock 2,500 salmon in the river. U.S. Fish and Wildlife lists Snake River sockeye as threatened and endangered in Oregon and Washington.
Read more:
American birds fight to survive
Global warming may force orioles, eagles from D.C. region
Hummingbirds want the sweet stuff. And if they don't get it, they get mad.


Help butterflies, bees and birds with a pollinator garden in your yard

Monarch butterflies are on the move. They’re traveling from the Northeast to their winter home in Mexico. And as they travel, they might stop in your neighborhood for sips of nectar from flowers. But what if none of the yards offer a tasty snack for monarchs or other pollinators? You can change that. And October is a good time to start. We talked to two experts at Smithsonian Gardens for pointers on creating a home garden to attract pollinators. James Gagliardi and Sylvia Schmeichel are the horticulturalists responsible for the large pollinator garden outside the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. It features 230 plant species to attract pollinators and host their eggs. They encourage kids (and their parents) to think about a variety of animals when planning a garden. “Move beyond monarchs,” Gagliardi said. “Different pollinators connect with different plants in different ways. Beetles are pollinators. Hummingbirds, flies, bees, moths.” Gagliardi suggests finding out which plants are native to your area and seeing what those plants attract. Mountain mint, asters and goldenrod are a few of his suggestions. “Plant a variety that bloom all year long,” Schmeichel said. “If there is a particular pollinator you want, read about what they like.” And you don’t have to have a large planting space. “You can even do it in a container on your balcony,” she said. Using seeds or plants depends on the time and money you can spend. “I like to use plant material because I’m impatient,” Gagliardi said. Some flowers come from bulbs, which require a bit of patience. You plant bulbs such as daffodils, crocuses and snow drops in the fall, and they flower in the spring. Thinking ahead is important for creating a welcome spot for pollinators in every season. “You know that on a warm day at the end of winter you start to see insect activity, and there’s places for them to eat,” Gagliardi said. Providing year-round food for pollinators has benefits well beyond your yard. Pollinated plants provide berries and seeds that other wild animals eat. And about 35 percent of the world’s food crops rely on pollinators. So at your next meal, you might consider something Schmeichel mentioned: “Every third bite of food is thanks to a pollinator.” kidspost@washpost.com

kidspost@washpost.com


Butterflies aren’t expendable. Our brittle reality depends on them, too.

Michael S. Engel is a paleontologist and entomologist at the University of Kansas.
The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Tex., encompasses 100 acres of subtropical bushlands along the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s a refuge for more than 200 species of pollinating butterflies, as well as thousands of other species — flowers, birds, mammals and countless other insects.
The administration’s plan to build a border wall through the sanctuary will effectively destroy it. But such a loss will strike many as insignificant. Butterflies — so graceful and frail — seem almost a luxury rather than a necessity. Surely, the disappearance of a few more won’t make any difference in the long run?
We now know that this is not true. Similar losses have played out time and again to the point at which our insects are in decline. Ecosystems are much like the game of Jenga: You pull too many blocks from the tower, and it collapses. We remove one biological reserve here, we extirpate a series of species there, we pollute, we fragment, we introduce invasive species, all to the point of eventual catastrophe.
“How brittle in reality are all the things whose permanence is never questioned.” These words from the great 20th-century explorer Freya Stark are supremely fitting for our blatantly blasé attitude toward biological diversity and its conservation. Most of us take it for granted that those species we rely upon daily will always be around.
Recent studies, however, have revealed precipitous declines in insect abundance that foretell the possibility of considerable extinction, the so-called insect apocalypse. It is peculiar, given our interdependence, that there has been no great swell of concern regarding the impending possibility of a world in which insects are a shadow of their former selves, or gone entirely. Many, presumably, think “good riddance.” Who needs roaches, mosquitoes or filthy flies? And, what if we lose some butterflies, bees and beetles along the way? Surely, we gain more by ridding ourselves of these pests? Do they really matter?
It is dangerous to set an entire group of organisms apart from all others when referring to their impact on the broader economy of nature. In these matters, everything is intertwined. Among all of life’s creatures, insects are some of the most vital, whether we notice their many services or not. By the sheer fact of their staggering diversity and vast ecological connectedness, insects are interwoven into the fundamental functions of virtually every ecosystem. An insect apocalypse is our apocalypse.
Had the headlines specified that plants or mammals or birds or fishes were about to go extinct, we can be sure that considerable alarm would arise. We understand, for example, that we need plants for food, medicines, natural products, oxygen and any other number of basic life functions. These same plants need insects to such a degree that the absence of the latter makes our world untenable. If we lose insects, then we would simultaneously lose enormous percentages of our plants, as well as swaths of birds, mammals, freshwater fish and countless other groups.
Consider just one of the myriad ways in which insects support our survival. Of the nearly 300,000 species of flowering plants, around 90 percent of these rely on an animal pollinator to complete their reproductive cycle. Approximately 200,000 species of animals provide this critical service, 199,000 of which are insects, pollinating everything from our heavy contingent of crops to mighty forests, deserts, prairies, tundras and everything in between.
As insects are disappearing, plants everywhere are experiencing a diminution in natural pollination. Without these critical animal species, the basic reproduction of these plants would be compromised and, for many, would grind to a halt. These plants are our foodstuffs (every third bite of food is the product of such pollination), the timber for our homes, the source and templates for many of our pharmaceuticals, and the natural products from which we derive so many other materials. The world’s forests generate the very oxygen we breathe.
Beyond pollination services, insects are also the food of many birds, mammals and fish — their lives sacrificed to sustain those of tens of thousands of other more conspicuous species — species that in their own way go on to support us. In such a fashion, even pests such as mosquitoes are necessary to sustain life. Without insects, all of these would perish. Insects underpin, often unseen and ignored, the essential processes of our world.
We can no longer afford to be cavalier about saving those species with whom we share this world, including insects. Our indispensable pollinators, most of whom are insects, are disappearing. Our Jenga tower is teetering, and the brittleness of our reality is becoming more apparent.
Choosing to save the National Butterfly Center is a microcosm of the larger choice we face in saving ourselves. We need to become disentranced when it comes to insects, awakening to the reality that our very lives are dependent on their success and survival. The loss of insects confronts us with famine, economic turmoil, pandemics and the toxification of our atmosphere. Anything that jeopardizes insect success undermines our own.


Getting monarch butterflies to hit the highways in Virginia

As the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s third annual monarch butterfly campaign gains momentum in Northern Virginia this summer, conservationists are taking their fight to the streets — specifically, Virginia’s vast network of highways.
Since the conservancy’s campaign to help the threatened monarch butterfly was launched in 2013, the project has led to the release of thousands of butterflies and the planting of hundreds of monarch “way stations” — gardens filled with pollinator-friendly plants, such as milkweed — across Loudoun County and beyond.
The group’s public outreach and education efforts are going strong this year, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy Executive Director Nicole Hamilton said, but the campaign is broadening its goals to include a statewide makeover of the landscaping along hundreds of miles of highways.
“Milkweed is growing all over the place in the medians and along the roadsides in Virginia,” Hamilton said. “I get e-mails from people driving up along [Interstate] 81 and on Route 50, and they’re always asking me, ‘What are you doing about this?’ ”
For 11 months, Hamilton has been working with officials in the central office of the Virginia Department of Transportation, hoping to encourage the statewide cultivation of monarch-friendly greenery along the commonwealth’s highways. Instead of mowing or spraying herbicides on milkweed and other plants that pollinators need to survive, Hamilton said, officials should let the state’s median strips and roadside vegetation serve as a wild habitat for the butterflies that urgently need them.
The group’s goal is aligned with a recently announced national priority: Last month, President Obama introduced the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a comprehensive plan that aims to stop the continuing decline of pollinating insect populations through a variety of methods, including placing restrictions on pesticides and restoring millions of acres of pollinator habitats.
The population of monarch butterflies, which are famous for their extraordinary annual migration between Mexico and the United States, have declined dramatically in recent years. Experts have cited numerous factors, including changing climate patterns, illegal logging in the Mexican forests where the butterflies winter and the widespread use of herbicide sprays in the United States.
Virginia transportation officials can help the orange-and-black butterflies survive, Hamilton said, by allowing existing habitats to flourish and by planting native, pollinator-friendly plants in place of fescue grass.
“We already have this great resource that’s growing on its own, and just by changing mowing practices and herbicide practices, which saves taxpayer money, we can foster that,” she said. “And then we can look at replanting, so we can change fescue over to wildflower mixes.”
Hamilton said her contacts at VDOT’s central office have been supportive and encouraging. Last year, VDOT officials and the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy headed a project to establish monarch way stations at four rest stops and commuter lots in Northern Virginia. But without a formal statewide plan, Hamilton said, not all jurisdictions will be aware of or support a pollinator-friendly approach to vegetation management. A few weeks ago, Hamilton learned that certain VDOT districts were spraying herbicides on milkweed and mowing medians and roadsides.
On June 4, Hamilton wrote a letter to the commissioner of the department, urging him to take action: “This practice is not only damaging to monarchs, bees and other pollinators, but also a waste of taxpayer money,” she wrote. The letter included recommendations that included using a more environmentally friendly mowing schedule, and education and training materials to help the public understand why the look of public roadways might change.
Hamilton said she hoped to hear back before the July Fourth weekend, which typically involves a “mowing blitz” along Virginia’s highways. She hopes the mowing can wait until October, after the monarchs have completed their breeding and migration cycle.
Marshall Herman, a VDOT spokeswoman, said that the commissioner had mailed a response to Hamilton’s letter and that officials hope to arrange an in-person meeting to discuss how the department “can help the monarch butterfly.”
The conservancy’s goal might seem simple enough, Hamilton said, but she expects some concerns. She has been told on occasion that Virginia drivers are accustomed to the aesthetics of mowed and manicured roadways and might not like the look of wild native plants. But she’s convinced that if people understand the reason for the change, they will be supportive.
“The solution is education and outreach and communication,” she said. “If people understand what this is for, then they’ll get behind it. Who doesn’t want to see their roadsides used for something good, like bringing back a species?”
Read more on this here:
Fourth-grader plays major role in local effort to save the monarch
The White House plan to save the monarch butterfly: build a butterfly highway
Michelle Obama makes the pitch for pollinators


Butterfly decline signals trouble in environment

and two are listed as threatened. Habitat loss is a major problem, as are bug sprays, especially those used by municipalities and homeowners to control mosquitoes. “We know that it’s becoming increasingly popular for individual homeowners to use misting systems to spray low levels of pesticides. As those become more abundant, we have to evaluate if those are contributing to the decline,” Williams said. “If you don’t have a place to nest, if you don’t have a place to lay eggs, if you don’t have a place to get the floral resources you need, because they’re absent because of drought or early bloom, you’re in trouble,” Adams said. The same issues plaguing butterflies are also causing populations of frogs, salamanders and toads to plummet, along with bees and other insects. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study estimated that seven species of amphibians will drop by 50 percent if the current rate of decline, fueled by pesticide use and loss of habitat, continues. Why should anyone care about losing butterflies, asked Robert K. Robbins, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. Although the insect looks fragile, like most bugs it clings to existence more ferociously than mammals. If butterflies are going extinct, “it’s a strong indicator that we’re messing up the environment around us,” Robbins said. Numerous animals such as Carolina parakeets and passenger pigeons have vanished, but butterflies have been known to disappear in one place and show up in another, which is why the Fish and Wildlife Service waited at least a decade to announce the extinction of the skippers. Like all flora and fauna, humans stand to gain a lot from the presence of a butterfly species — a possible medical breakthrough from study and biomedical research, for example, Robbins said. But he sees a bigger picture. When an entire line dies off, “it’s a report card on the health of the environment around us,” Robbins said. “We depend on fresh air and food that isn’t full of chemicals. I think that’s a more important aspect than maybe we would’ve discovered a gene that would’ve cured some disease. It’s our general survival.” Eighty percent of food crops are pollinated by insects such as bees, moths and butterflies, according to scientists. Nearly a third of the nation’s honeybees have disappeared, and scientists theorize that pesticide use is a contributing factor in their decline. It’s not

The male Schaus swallowtail butterfly is an endangered species.  (Dr. Thomas C. Emmel/University of Florida)
Butterflies are the essence of cool in the insect world, a favorite muse for poets and songwriters, who hold them up as symbols of love, beauty, transformation and good fortune.
But providing good fortune apparently goes only one way. As humans rip apart woods and meadows for housing developments and insecticide-soaked lawns, butterflies across the country are disappearing.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that two brown, mothlike butterfly subspecies are probably extinct in South Florida, which some entomologists say is ground zero for the number of butterfly species on the verge of annihilation.
The rockland grass skipper went missing in 1999, and the Zestos skipper hasn’t been seen since 2004. Several other species, such as the ebony-and-ivory-colored Schaus swallowtail, are listed as endangered, and many others are threatened, including the silvery Bartram’s hairstreak.
“We look at it as a signal that we’ve got a serious problem with butterflies and other insects and pollinators here in Florida,” said Larry Williams, a supervisor for the ecological services program at the Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’re looking at this as sort of a wake-up call that we need to be watching butterflies more closely.”
At least one species of butterfly has vanished from the United States, along with the two subspecies in South Florida. Seventeen species and subspecies are listed as endangered nationwide, and two are listed as threatened.
Habitat loss is a major problem, as are bug sprays, especially those used by municipalities and homeowners to control mosquitoes. “We know that it’s becoming increasingly popular for individual homeowners to use misting systems to spray low levels of pesticides. As those become more abundant, we have to evaluate if those are contributing to the decline,” Williams said.
To Laurie Davies Adams, executive director of Pollinator Partnership, a group dedicated to the conservation of insects such as bees, moths and butterflies, the explanation for the butterfly decline is simple.
“If you don’t have a place to nest, if you don’t have a place to lay eggs, if you don’t have a place to get the floral resources you need, because they’re absent because of drought or early bloom, you’re in trouble,” Adams said.
The same issues plaguing butterflies are also causing populations of frogs, salamanders and toads to plummet, along with bees and other insects. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study estimated that seven species of amphibians will drop by 50 percent if the current rate of decline, fueled by pesticide use and loss of habitat, continues.
Pesticide use has also led to a collapse of other pollinators — wasps, beetles and especially honeybees. At least 25,000 bumblebees were recently found dead at an Oregon parking lot, ironically during National Pollinator Week, which started June 18.
Why should anyone care about losing butterflies, asked Robert K. Robbins, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.
Although the insect looks fragile, like most bugs it clings to existence more ferociously than mammals. If butterflies are going extinct, “it’s a strong indicator that we’re messing up the environment around us,” Robbins said.
Numerous animals such as Carolina parakeets and passenger pigeons have vanished, but butterflies have been known to disappear in one place and show up in another, which is why the Fish and Wildlife Service waited at least a decade to announce the extinction of the skippers.
The last confirmed extinction of a butterfly species was of the blueberry-colored Xerces blue, which disappeared from San Francisco sand dunes that were commercially developed, Robbins said.
Like all flora and fauna, humans stand to gain a lot from the presence of a butterfly species — a possible medical breakthrough from study and biomedical research, for example, Robbins said. But he sees a bigger picture.
When an entire line dies off, “it’s a report card on the health of the environment around us,” Robbins said. “We depend on fresh air and food that isn’t full of chemicals. I think that’s a more important aspect than maybe we would’ve discovered a gene that would’ve cured some disease. It’s our general survival.”
Eighty percent of food crops are pollinated by insects such as bees, moths and butterflies, according to scientists. Nearly a third of the nation’s honeybees have disappeared, and scientists theorize that pesticide use is a contributing factor in their decline.
It’s not that butterflies will be wiped off the face of the Earth anytime soon. There are 650 to 750 species in the United States and slightly fewer than 20,000 species worldwide. Peru has a quarter of those, and species explode in tropical areas such as the Caribbean. But their estimated decline is rapid and troubling in the United States.
“Every single day the number of butterflies in the United States decreases, because every day a meadow is developed into a lot,” said Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association.
“And then I would say second is pesticide use,” he said. It doesn’t have to be this way, he said. “It would be really easy for people to make a significant difference in the environment just by the way they planted their suburban yards. Many butterflies would be increased by planting your yard with the right native plants.”
Butterflies live a few days or a few weeks, depending on the species. Females lay a few hundred eggs in a lifetime, Williams said. Generally, they lay about a half-dozen at one time.
A larva emerges and slowly feeds on plant leaves. Even those are threatened by invasive species introduced by humans, such as the green iguana in Florida, which eats the plants along with the larva.
Mark Salvato, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, hacked his way through pine scrub at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys and discovered that first-hand with the endangered Miami blue butterfly.
“A very large iguana population was eating the Miami blue host plant,” Salvato said. After a two-year cold snap ending in 2010, the plants died back, and when they returned, iguanas pounced, devouring both the plants and the butterfly larva. “It was kind of like a perfect storm,” he said.


A cry in the dark but no answer. This is how millions of little bats are dying from a lethal fungus.

Mexican free-tailed bats swirl higher and higher as they make their nightly exit from the Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve outside of Mason, Tex. (Tom Fox/Dallas Morning News via AP)
Sometimes bad guys are clad in white.
A creepy, sticky and icky menace known as white-nose syndrome that attacks little brown bats as they're curled up sleeping during their winter hibernation is a case in point.
More than 7 million bats have perished from white-nose since it was discovered in an Albany, N.Y. cave nine years ago, and a new research paper provides insight into why. As little brown bats observed for the study dozed in a coma-like sleep, their immune systems recognized the attacking disease but never didn't lift a finger to stop it.
[Nearly seven million bats have died from white-nose fungus]
"The alarm is going up and no one is showing up to put out the fire," said Kenneth A. Field, the lead author of the research released Thursday. Normally, when inflammation and swelling happens, immune systems spring into action like a body guard. But for little brown bats, it turned a little and kept sleeping.
BU-led researchers predict that little brown bats may be extinct in the Northeast within 16 years.
Field is one of the first researchers to take the study of the Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus that causes white nose from a petri dish to the field. He watched helplessly as the disease ate away at membranes in the wings of the bats. His understanding of what was happening was limited by the step-by-step nature of research. More observation was needed to know exactly why the bats were so easily taken out.
"We don’t know for sure that it’s the fungus in white nose that’s stopping the cells, or that the bats are hibernating and can’t respond," said Field, an associate professor of biology at Bucknell University. Little brown bats that once filled the night skies to hunt insects have been nearly wiped out on the Atlantic coast, and a recent U.S. Geological Survey report said it could take decades for them to recover, if at all.
Field hopes the study is a positive step toward finding a way to one day strengthen the immune system of bats or maybe even kill white-nose. The paper broke down the processes happening in bats and the disease attacking them, showing pathways that gave way in the animals and how genes in the disease behaved as they destroyed.
Electron microscopy of white nose syndrome. (Kevin Keel/Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study)
An "important finding was to look at how the genes in the fungus expressed" in order to know how to target its growth," Field said. Maybe scientist can develop a drug, he speculated. But wondering how such a drug could be administered to bats, or how white-nose can possibly be disinfected in some of the vast cave systems where bats hibernate brought him back to Earth.
"It’s not understood what’s going in the summer with the disease because the caves stay cold all year long," he said. "It’s still a mystery what’s going on."
The paper was published Thursday in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Other authors included Joseph S. Johnson, Thomas M. Lilley and Sophia M. Reeder, all researchers in Bucknell's biology department. Melissa J. Behr, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was also an author.
At least one other research paper showed that bats that survive hibernation -- many drop dead to the floor of their cave -- develop massive inflammation when their immune systems awaken and kick in. "But the fire has spread too far," he said, "and it’s too late."
Pause for a second to see the big picture, the awesome devastation biologists have witnessed now for nearly a decade. In the spring, they've visited caves in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma and other states to find hundreds of thousands of bats lying dead or flopping about in the late stages of agonizing deaths.
Bats are preparing to reenter caves and abandoned mines in late October for a four-month hibernation. “I’m terribly, terribly concerned,” Katie Gillies, a conservation biologist for Bat Conservation International, said when they were about to hibernate last year. “I don’t think the disease will run its course. There is no way to save our bats from white nose without intervention. The situation is . . . absolutely dire.”
White-nose syndrome is basically Ebola for bats, an animal pandemic. Gray bats, big brown bats, Northern long-eared bats and tri-colored bats are also affected. Ninety-percent of little brown bats in the northeast are dead. Here's how the research paper describes it: "White-nose syndrome is the most devastating epizootic wildlife disease of mammals in history, having killed millions of hibernating bats in North America since 2007."
Sometimes it drives bats mad before they start to sleep. Consider this 2013 incident Great Smoky Mountain National Park that straddles North Carolina and Tennessee. Bats that were supposed to be sleeping were out and about, acting crazy in many cases.
[Bats hit hard by deadly one-two punch: windmills and white-nose syndrome]
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, they launched their mouse-sized bodies at unsuspecting tourists, who tried to shoo them off with walking sticks, fishing poles and their bare hands. One bat flew smack into a trail walker’s forehead.
This might seem funny if you don't know what bats mean to the world. They pollinate everything from bananas to peaches to agave plants from which tequila is extracted. It's a good bet that people who dislike bats dislike gypsy moths and other moth species even more. Moths are like a tater tot for bats.
Bats that eat bugs by the metric ton are worth about $3 billion per year in pest control for U.S. agriculture, according to a separate report by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2011.
“People often ask why we should care about bats,” said Paul Cryan, a USGS research biologist who helped write the report. “Bats are saving us big bucks by gobbling up insects that eat or damage our crops.”
A male big brown bat. (University of Maryland)
Read More:
This tiny dinosaur may have had wings like a bat
Ten reasons why bats are cooler than you think
Erratic bat behavior at Great Smoky park may be linked to lethal syndrome
White-nose syndrome threatens bat species
The Monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished
Bat with record-breaking tongue found in the Bolivian jungle


A common pesticide may be a menace to pollinators. Know how to protect them.

Be the guardian of your garden. (Gaby D'Alessandro/for The Washington Post) Many homeowners want to throw a lifeline to beleaguered bees and butterflies by planting pollinator gardens that will provide sustenance and habitat, but the unwitting use of insecticides may lure these beloved insects to their doom. The worry is that a common type of pesticide known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, will poison honeybees, bumblebees, monarch butterflies — all the species of insects that we want in our gardens. For a decade, neonics have dominated a frustrating quest to find a cause for the loss of commercial beehives in agriculture, but the issue has also moved into the garden, particularly with new legislation in Maryland. If the Pollinator Protection Act is signed into law by Gov. Larry Hogan this month, consumers will not be able to buy neonic insecticides after 2017. Farmers and licensed applicators could still use them. The pesticide industry says neonics are safe, that honeybees are doing all right and that the law “inexplicably blames homeowners for the nonexistent decline in bees.” But those who want to see broader restrictions for neonics in the United States are buoyed by it. Hogan has yet to announce whether he will sign the bill. “It’s important that Maryland be the leader and show the rest of the United States these are really harmful compounds and we need to limit their use,” said April Boulton, associate professor of biology at Hood College in Frederick. She was among scientists testifying for the bill earlier this year. (The Washington Post) Neonics control some of the most common and persistent garden pests, including thrips, adelgids, borers, scale insects and Japanese beetles, but they also kill or harm beneficial insects, as well as aquatic life if they enter bodies of water. Within a treated plant, the compounds also find their way to pollen and nectar, the treats that flowers give pollinators for their service. “Instead of putting in a capful in a bucket of water, the homeowner will pour in half the bottle or the whole bottle,” with highly toxic results, Boulton said. But Boulton and many other scientists say that even at correct doses, the compounds can harm desirable organisms, even if they don’t kill them. Hartmut Doebel, assistant professor of biology at George Washington University, has directed honeybee experiments that suggest memory loss with extremely low levels of imidacloprid, he said. Bees need

Be the guardian of your garden. (Gaby D'Alessandro/for The Washington Post)
Many homeowners want to throw a lifeline to beleaguered bees and butterflies by planting pollinator gardens that will provide sustenance and habitat, but the unwitting use of insecticides may lure these beloved insects to their doom.
The worry is that a common type of pesticide known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, will poison honeybees, bumblebees, monarch butterflies — all the species of insects that we want in our gardens.
For a decade, neonics have dominated a frustrating quest to find a cause for the loss of commercial beehives in agriculture, but the issue has also moved into the garden, particularly with new legislation in Maryland. If the Pollinator Protection Act is signed into law by Gov. Larry Hogan this month, consumers will not be able to buy neonic insecticides after 2017. Farmers and licensed applicators could still use them.
The pesticide industry says neonics are safe, that honeybees are doing all right and that the law “inexplicably blames homeowners for the nonexistent decline in bees.” But those who want to see broader restrictions for neonics in the United States are buoyed by it. Hogan has yet to announce whether he will sign the bill.
“It’s important that Maryland be the leader and show the rest of the United States these are really harmful compounds and we need to limit their use,” said April Boulton, associate professor of biology at Hood College in Frederick. She was among scientists testifying for the bill earlier this year.
(The Washington Post)
Neonics control some of the most common and persistent garden pests, including thrips, adelgids, borers, scale insects and Japanese beetles, but they also kill or harm beneficial insects, as well as aquatic life if they enter bodies of water. Within a treated plant, the compounds also find their way to pollen and nectar, the treats that flowers give pollinators for their service.
One of the major concerns is that homeowners, as opposed to farmers or professional landscapers, are the least likely to know what’s in a pesticide product and correctly follow the label’s directions.
“Instead of putting in a capful in a bucket of water, the homeowner will pour in half the bottle or the whole bottle,” with highly toxic results, Boulton said.
But Boulton and many other scientists say that even at correct doses, the compounds can harm desirable organisms, even if they don’t kill them. Hartmut Doebel, assistant professor of biology at George Washington University, has directed honeybee experiments that suggest memory loss with extremely low levels of imidacloprid, he said. Bees need memory to navigate between nectar sources and their hives. Imidacloprid is one of the most common types of neonics; others include acetamiprid, clothianidin and dinotefuran. (These are the names consumers have to find in fine print on the bottle labels to know whether they contain neonics.)
“Even at sublethal levels, they have impairments of memory capacities,” he said. “We are not aware of all the implications and effects” of the insecticides.
Doebel and others said that most of the research on neonic toxicity has been on honeybees, because of their agricultural importance, and much less is known of the effects on other insects, including hundreds of species of native bees that are much harder to track.
To discover whether a pesticide contains a neonicotinoid, look for the active ingredient on the label. The most common neonic is imidacloprid, but others include thiacloprid, acetamaprid, clothianidin and dinotefuran. (Gaby D'Alessandro/for The Washington Post)
This was a central argument by environmental groups commenting on a current draft assessment of imidacloprid by the Environmental Protection Agency. (A preliminary review says honeybees feeding on two crops — citrus and cotton — have been placed at risk from neonics.)
“In our home gardens, we have an amazing array of beneficial insects — lacewings, assassin bugs, for example — that help us maintain pest levels,” said Aimee Code, pesticide program director at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “Neonics can be extremely harmful, particularly because they are so long-lived and toxic.”
Neonics entered the market in the 1990s and were quickly embraced by farmers around the world: They were cheap, effective, long-lasting and safe for people and other warm-blooded animals, which was not the case for older-generation pesticides, including ones made from real nicotine.
As a systemic insecticide, neonics are taken up within a plant’s tissues. This proved a seemingly perfect way of targeting the aphids, flea beetles, weevils, worms or whatever pest was sucking the sap or munching on the leaves. Even if you just treated a seed with a neonic, it would grow into a plant fully protected from pests.
Stephanie Darnell, a scientist with Bayer Crop Science, said that restricting a systemic pesticide such as neonics, which her company produces, could lead consumers to use more products that are less discriminating in what they kill. The Maryland bill could also push consumers, she said, to pay for lawn service agreements with contractors with licenses to use neonics.
By 2011, almost one-third of insecticides used globally were neonics, creating a market worth $3.6 billion.
By then, the mysterious loss of honeybees known as colony collapse disorder had emerged to bring unsustainable hive losses to commercial beekeepers, and researchers began to link the crisis to the widespread use of neonics.
The jury is still out on the cause of the disorder, which is more likely to be a lethal mix of stressors, particularly the spread of a parasitic bee mite. Some studies show that neonics compromise bees’ immune systems and ability to raise their young.
In spite of the absence of a clear single reason, the movement against neonics appears to be gaining traction. The European Union has imposed a ban on three types of neonics pending study. In the United States, the EPA has put a halt on issuing permits for new neonic pesticide products and is reevaluating the environmental risks of neonics. Several states besides Maryland are considering restrictions, and major retailers such as Lowe’s and Home Depot have said they will phase out the sale of neonic pesticides and label plants that have been treated. Ortho recently announced it was removing neonics from eight consumer pesticides.
One quandary for gardeners is knowing whether annuals, perennials or even woody plants sold at garden centers have been treated with neonics, which can linger in a plant for a year or more, as well as in the soil. It’s also a challenge for independent garden centers, which might source a wide range of plants from dozens of different growers.
Retail nursery Behnke in Beltsville has pulled neonic pesticides from its shelves, stopped treating its plants with neonics and polled its growers on neonic use. “About 70 percent of the perennial growers we buy from are not using them,” horticulturist Larry Hurley said. Plants sold by Behnke’s as “pollinator-friendly” are known not to be treated, he said.
My thoughts? I wouldn’t want neonic-treated plants in my suburban garden, given the risks to bees. I could see using a neonic on a precious hemlock to ward off the woolly adelgid (as a conifer, the hemlock wouldn’t attract pollinators). If I had a specimen ash tree, now at mortal risk from the emerald ash borer, the choice would be hard, although ash trees aren’t known as big magnets for insect pollinators, so it might be justified. I would never treat trees that are bee magnets, such as tulip trees, linden trees, cherries and hollies, and fruit trees, to name just a few obvious ones.
The bigger issue is the idea of reaching for a pesticide to fix a problem, which is often a symptom of something greater. Most problems can be minimized by picking a plant developed by nature or a breeder to grow in our region, to place it correctly, to care for the soil and to live with a level of insect or disease damage. Weeds are suppressed by the presence of more plants and by the gardener with a sharp hoe.
“We need to take a step back,” said Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society and the co-author of “Gardening for Butterflies.” “We need to work with nature rather than fighting against it.”
@adrian_higgins on Twitter
More from Lifestyle:
An introduction to the 4,000 kinds of bees in the U.S. and Canada
When you love lilacs, but they don’t love you back
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5 secrets of successful gardeners


Creating a haven for butterflies and bees

Sharon Metcalf relaxes in her Bethesda townhouse garden that she reworked as a habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) In addition, he says, the widespread planting of genetically modified crops has allowed farmers to more effectively kill milkweed, the plant that monarchs need as caterpillars. In March, conservation groups reported the smallest overwintering population of monarchs since their colonies were discovered in Mexico by scientists in 1975. Taylor said he has so far persuaded about 7,000 gardeners to establish “waystations” for the monarchs. But with the loss of almost 200 million acres of monarch habitat over the past 20 years, he would like to see 7 million gardeners come to their rescue. Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director for the Providing nectar plants for monarchs, of course, will help other butterfly species. Other pollinators — notably honeybees and bumblebees — are facing problems of their own. Here, too, the gardener can make a difference by installing plants rich in nectar and pollen and by using pesticides carefully, if at all. Monarchs She planted a bank of swamp milkweed across the hillside and then converted her little patch of lawn, adding nectar-rich perennials to some existing shrubs and planting additional milkweed among them. She says the adult butterfly can detect milkweed plants from as far as a mile away. The butterfly lays eggs on the leaves, which hatch into hungry worms. Chemicals in the leaf make the caterpillars and adults distasteful to birds, and the striking markings of the caterpillar and the butterfly signal the fact. “I was noticing fewer hummingbirds. I was getting turtles at some point, but they seemed to be disappearing. I was noticing in the lights at night fewer and fewer insects,” she said. “I realized if I wanted to create a healthier ecosystem, a good visible place to start is with monarchs, particularly because of their decline.” Since she reworked her garden in early spring, she says, “I’m seeing things come back that I had lost.” Replacing a small lawn with wildlife-friendly plantings might be enough for most of us, but a pair of tent-like cubes, three feet by two feet, attest to a greater effort: Metcalf is currently raising a brood of two dozen monarch caterpillars obtained through Taylor’s organization. They arrived the day I paid her a visit. Several small plastic cups each held two or three caterpillars. Newly hatched,

Sharon Metcalf relaxes in her Bethesda townhouse garden that she reworked as a habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
If you plan to renovate or rework parts of your yard this fall, your plan should include your hardest-working partners in the garden, the insect pollinators. They are not only industrious, fascinating and beautiful, they are up against it. Bees and butterflies are imperiled by habitat loss and pesticide use. Gardeners, collectively, can throw them a lifeline. “Basically, we have to convince the gardeners of this country to convert their gardens in some manner for pollinators,” said Chip Taylor, a scientist and educator who founded Monarch Watch to raise awareness of the plight of this wondrous insect.
Successive generations of monarch make an annual journey from Mexico to Canada and back, but the butterfly is losing ground. Taylor, who is a professor of ecology at the University of Kansas , says that in the United States as much as 6,000 acres of open land is lost each day to development, territory that the butterfly relies on to feed and reproduce.
In addition, he says, the widespread planting of genetically modified crops has allowed farmers to more effectively kill milkweed, the plant that monarchs need as caterpillars.
In March, conservation groups reported the smallest overwintering population of monarchs since their colonies were discovered in Mexico by scientists in 1975.
Taylor said he has so far persuaded about 7,000 gardeners to establish “waystations” for the monarchs. But with the loss of almost 200 million acres of monarch habitat over the past 20 years, he would like to see 7 million gardeners come to their rescue.
Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director for the
Providing nectar plants for monarchs, of course, will help other butterfly species. Other pollinators — notably honeybees and bumblebees — are facing problems of their own. Here, too, the gardener can make a difference by installing plants rich in nectar and pollen and by using pesticides carefully, if at all.
Monarchs
Sharon Metcalf lives in a cul-de-sac of townhouses in Bethesda, backing up to a grassy hillside and public woodland. She decided she would come to the aid of the monarch after watching the Imax film, “Flight of the Butterflies,” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
She planted a bank of swamp milkweed across the hillside and then converted her little patch of lawn, adding nectar-rich perennials to some existing shrubs and planting additional milkweed among them.
She says the adult butterfly can detect milkweed plants from as far as a mile away. The butterfly lays eggs on the leaves, which hatch into hungry worms. Chemicals in the leaf make the caterpillars and adults distasteful to birds, and the striking markings of the caterpillar and the butterfly signal the fact.
“I was noticing fewer hummingbirds. I was getting turtles at some point, but they seemed to be disappearing. I was noticing in the lights at night fewer and fewer insects,” she said. “I realized if I wanted to create a healthier ecosystem, a good visible place to start is with monarchs, particularly because of their decline.”
Since she reworked her garden in early spring, she says, “I’m seeing things come back that I had lost.”
Replacing a small lawn with wildlife-friendly plantings might be enough for most of us, but a pair of tent-like cubes, three feet by two feet, attest to a greater effort: Metcalf is currently raising a brood of two dozen monarch caterpillars obtained through Taylor’s organization. They arrived the day I paid her a visit.
Several small plastic cups each held two or three caterpillars. Newly hatched, they were tiny — maybe a quarter-inch long and not much thicker than a cotton thread. They go through five molts before reaching pupating size. If you looked closely — she handed me a magnifying glass — you could see the distinctive patterning of black, yellow and white stripes.
Metcalf took a milkweed leaf she had harvested from the garden and placed it in one of the cups. The tiny creature went straight for it.
“I like to make milkweed sandwiches,” she said, demonstrating the technique. She places a leaf with the underside up. When a caterpillar crawls on it, she places a second leaf on top to allow it to munch away while covered. After a few minutes, the larva has made a discernible hole in the upper leaf.
As the caterpillars grow, so do their appetites, and Metcalf has to make sure they have enough milkweed: She sets a whole plant that she has dug and potted, and places it in each of the two zippered tents. Here they can develop into big caterpillars and then chrysalides without fear of being eaten.
The larvae take about 10 days to pupate and another 10 to 14 days as a chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly. Metcalf already has raised one brood this summer. She held a party for its release, first attaching a small identifying tag to each butterfly before its release.
The effort takes time, knowledge and equipment, and the kit comes with two full pages of single-spaced instructions. Taylor says the rearing program is an educational initiative geared more to schools than home gardeners, but there is little doubt that Metcalf is helping the monarch population.
For every 100 monarch eggs that hatch in nature, only one makes it to adulthood. Metcalf is counting on all two dozen of her charges taking flight toward the end of this month. “It could be these butterflies will move north or they’ll decide it’s time to fly back to Mexico,” she said.
Taylor also runs a tagging program for folks who want to capture migrating monarchs in a butterfly net and affix a sticker to their underwing. Since 1992, more than 1 million monarchs have been tagged, of which 16,000 have been recovered to provide scientific tracking of their migrations.
Running a kindergarten for butterflies and tagging them may be too much for most of us, but anyone with a bit of land can do something: “The average gardener just needs to plant eight or 10 plants to provide some habitat for pollinators,” Taylor said. “You don’t have to plant a whole garden.”
Honeybees
The decline of the honeybee has been one of the most publicized environmental disasters of the past decade. The sudden die-off and disappearance of whole hives, known as colony collapse disorder, is a phenomenon noted mos
In May, a panel of scientists established to find the cause of CCD reported its finding: There is no single cause. The honeybee is beaten down by a number of viruses spread in part by a parasitic mite, called varroa, and by poor nutrition and pesticide exposure.
The panel said that honeybee colonies need more genetic diversity bred into them, and that more study is needed to determine the risks of pesticides.
Officials have said there isn’t enough evidence to follow a European Union ban on a class of systemic pesticides called neonicotinoids, which even in low levels can harm the ability of bees to navigate and forage, critics say.
One response by the home gardener is to keep bees, but this is a time-consuming hobby beyond gardening. Vaughan, of the Xerces Society, says the gardener can do more for the honeybee by providing plants rich in nectar and pollen and by avoiding pesticides.
Bumblebees
Unlike honeybees, which came from the Old World with European settlers, bumblebees are native species that provide their own benefits to the gardener. They are better, for example, at pollinating tomatoes and blueberries than honeybees, and do a great job of pollinating squashes and cucumbers. They also can tolerate colder temperatures than honeybees. In addition to providing sources of nectar and pollen, the gardener can help the bumblebee by providing undisturbed, uncultivated areas of the yard where the bees can establish colonies, which may number 40 bees. (A honeybee hive can contain 50,000 bees.) Bumblebees may also nest in stone walls, unoccupied birdhouses or compost piles. Although they can sting, they rarely do. So if you find a nest, leave it alone.
Pesticides
Recently, a landscape contractor in Portland, Ore., sprayed linden trees against feeding aphids and managed to kill thousands of bumblebees.
There are ways of minimizing the risk, by not spraying plants in bloom and applying chemicals after bees have returned to their colonies at night. But the best way to conserve pollinators, according to the Xerces Society, is to avoid pesticides altogether.
Pyrethroids, which are commonly used against mosquitoes, kill many insects on contact, including beneficials. Of particular concern to pollinator advocates are neonicotinoids, which are relatively new and are now used extensively on plant-feeding pests. Among those registered are imidacloprid, acetamiprid and clothianidin.
Targeted pests include turf-feeding grubs, termites, leafhoppers, lacebugs and aphids. Bees can ingest neonicotinoids in nectar and pollen.
Separately, a study published July 24 by scientists at the Agriculture Department and the University of Maryland showed that when honeybees ingested pollen contaminated with fungicides, they were more likely to get a serious gut disease called nosema.
“Overall, we aren’t taking very good care of the little critters out there,” Taylor said. “These guys keep the system together.”
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