Your avocado toast may be killing the Monarch butterfly

[Judi Lynn]

Your avocado toast may be killing the Monarch butterfly

Written by

Cassie Werber

September 04, 2016


Two things Americans really love are coming into conflict.


Avocados have become an increasingly popular food in the US in recent years, as they’ve been both linked with health benefits and also aggressively marketed. But most of the avocados consumed in the US are grown in Mexico, and as demand rises, so does the incentive to deforest swathes of land and plant avocado trees instead of the pines that grow there.


Those oyamel fir trees comprise the winter home for Monarch butterflies, which migrate from Canada, across the US, and many of which come to rest in the Mexican province of Michoacan. The butterflies have been identified as so important that the leaders of those three countries discussed them at a summit, deciding to create a “flyway” with special plants en route for the Monarch caterpillars to eat.

More:
http://qz.com/773665/your-avocado-toast-may-be-killing-the-monarch-butterfly/

Environment & Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1127104726

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. Awww... I love avocados

[Dreamweaver 5.0]

2. Give up avocodos in USA for the sake of a butterfly?

Unfortunately that will never happen.
Most of us Americans suffer from CSIFMHD

Can't see it from my house disorder.

If avocodo farms got in the way of them playing golf,tennis or a Walmart then maybe.

Crazy times.

[GoDawgs]

3. Use Florida avocados (Dominicans)

They have less fat and the flesh is not so mushy. If you gotta have a hass avocado, can't we get them from California?

[GoDawgs]

4. Anyone else notice how much Monarchs like Tomato plant blossoms?

I'm not trying to hijack Judi's thread, but maybe a 'monarchista' will see this and know...

For past few years I've noticed monarchs all over the little yellow blossoms of my tomatoes. More than the other flowers in the yard, which all the other butterflies love. But the monarchs go to the tomatoes and visit every blossom. A lot! They definitely aren't laying caterpillar eggs, just getting the blossom nectar as far as can tell. They do visit other flowers but its disproportionate how much they keep to the tomatoes.

I don't mind it, it just that its odd.

The tomato varieties being grown are:
Romas, Supersweet100's, Husky Cherrys, Atkinsons, and Cherokees

[druidity33]

6. Are you sure

they are not tomato hornworm? They look pretty similar...

[yuiyoshida]

5. One time while living in Santa Barbara

We had a pretty bad storm. While walking about in the after math, I found on the ground a branch with one big ripe Avocado. I took it home and had it with Mayo, hot sauce (Tapatio) and green onions on bread. It was so, good, I kept the seed and planted it in a Jar. To my amazement it grew! So much so, that I was going to plant it in the backyard, but I ended up, since I was heading back to San Francisco, ending up selling it to my neighbor for 10 dollars! (He offered it, I had no clue what to sell it for.)

Unfortunately, I don't have a really good back yard now, so planting another seed was out of the question, but from what I have heard, my neighbor now has a healthy avocado tree that has produced its first crop of healthy Avocados. I love eating them when I get the chance, but Safeway Avocados are so damn expensive now, its difficult to buy one at those prices.

[FrodosPet]

7. Our species should be working towards our own extinction

Humans are bad for the planet.

http://www.vhemt.org/aboutvhemt.htm

Q: What is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement?

VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It’s a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We’re not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

We don’t carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing.

Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth’s ecology.

As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us.

~ snip ~