Farms and butterflies can co-exist: Research shows it’s not a crazy idea

Farms and butterflies can co-exist: Research shows it’s not a crazy idea

Amanda Zaluckyj, AGDAILY*

Image : SF photo, Shutterstock

When I was little—and not so little, in high school—the only way to get from our farm to the local office of the Farm Bureau was a series of small, narrow winding roads. I vividly remember feeling a mixture of excitement and sadness when the state began gobbling up private property to build the US-31 freeway. I didn’t like the government taking people’s homes and farms for land use planning. But the idea of ​​safer, easier, and faster access to the entire county, let alone Indiana, was appealing.

But the project remained in abeyance for almost 20 years. The reason ? On the home stretch, which was to connect the I-94/I-96 interchange to the South Bend Toll Road, workers discovered rare habitat for the even rarer Mitchell’s ringlet butterfly. The construction stopped dead.

This northern stretch of US-31 became the highway to nowhere until its recent completion and opening in late 2022. The state rerouted the route to preserve the butterfly’s habitat. Now commuters and butterflies can coexist.

We have all heard similar stories. A new subdivision is closed because a prehistoric toad is discovered in a nearby creek. A once-extinct bird’s nest offers reprieve to a doomed building. Or an exotic fish is preventing workers from repairing a bridge. There is always a dichotomy: either we protect endangered species or we allow unbridled human interference.

But what do you think of the word ” coexist »? Perhaps it is possible to live our modern lives in tandem with the environment. A recently published article in BioScience shows how this might happen.

The situation is as follows. The North American monarch butterfly travels to the northern United States each summer where it breeds. Its populations have declined by 80% to 99% over the past 30 years, mainly due to habitat loss. The fall is such that the butterfly is regarding to be placed on the federal endangered species list, which would allow it to benefit from more protective measures.

Conventional wisdom (irony) tells us that modern agriculture is to blame. After all, farmland destroys habitats and pesticides kill remaining insects. Because, you know, butterflies are insects and insecticides are aimed at insects. So the only solution is to radically change our agricultural practices to protect the monarchs, right?

But not so fast. Steve Bradbury, professor of environmental toxicology at Iowa State University, works with the Monarch Conservation Consortium to find solutions to the decrease in the number of butterflies. His team came to an interesting conclusion: farms and butterflies can co-exist!

Current US Department of Agriculture policy suggests that monarch habitats should only be located more than 30 meters from any agricultural land to protect the butterflies from pesticide drift. The Bradbury team found that under these requirements, 38% of uncultivated land and 84% of Iowa’s road allowances were unsuitable. That’s a lot of land!

The research team of theISU therefore wanted to verify this theory: are all these lands really prohibited? The group looked at how land use and pesticides actually influence monarch populations. It turns out that some pesticides, like the much-maligned neonicotinoids, don’t affect monarch habitats near fields. And if the drift of certain pesticides can harm the caterpillars, it does not have the same impact on the entire 30-meter zone around the field.

In other words, modern agriculture and nearly endangered monarch butterflies can live — and thrive — side by side. In fact, it might be the way to boost populations and keep the butterfly on the endangered species list. And future technologies (read: CRISPR) might create conditions where farmers use fewer pesticides, allowing conservationists to install even more habitats along fields.

Say it with me: coexist ».

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* Amanda Zaluckyj blogs under the name The Farmer’s Daughter USA. Its goal is to promote farmers and combat the misinformation that swirls around the US agrifood industry.

Source : Scientifically not a crazy idea: Farm and butterflies can coexist | AGDAILY