Monarch butterflies are pretty impressive insects: Aside from that whole metamorphosis thing, they’re famous for their annual winter migration, an up to 3,000-mile journey across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The breathtaking spectacle that results when they alight, by the millions, in central Mexico is the sort that inspires legends, not to mention sustains the country’s tourist industry.

But if the monarchs can be said to have a fatal flaw, it’s that they’re are entirely dependent upon milkweed. And milkweed, once common in the American Midwest, has been all but eliminated from the cropland where it once thrived, the loss a side effect of our growing, and increasingly efficient, industrial agriculture system. While the monarch itself isn’t yet endangered, its stunning migration could soon become a thing of the past.

There are actually a lot of places where we can place the blame for this. The push, by Congress, to use corn-based ethanol as biofuel didn’t help matters, and climate change certainly isn’t doing the butterflies any favors, either. The question now is what we’re going to do about it. Enter Chip Taylor, insect ecologist and founder of Monarch Watch. The group, which has been operating since 1992 out of the University […]