Yes, the number of monarchs I'd observed has been less and less for last ten years or so.
Very sad....

Just terrible... I have an empty 2 acre lot behind my house, I wonder if anyone would notice if I planted some milkweed.. :)

dbarron, It is the same here, but much worse the last 5 years than the 5 years prior to that. The last time that we had a big group of butterflies (thousands of them and it was a glorious sight) spend the night on a tree on the edge of our woodland was around 2002 or 2003 or possibly 2004. We also had a good year with heavy monarch traffic around 2009 or 2010 but have seen very, very few migrating ones since....and his year I think I could count on one hand the number of migrating monarchs I saw. I remember one day when I saw three of them. Three! In the past it would have been hundreds or thousands, depending on their migratory path in any given year.

Alexis, We have acres and acres of milkweed here in our neighborhood. The last couple of years, I haven't seen many monarchs on the milkweed on our property or on the property directly adjacent to our fire station, which has tons of milkweed growing on it. So, at least in our part of OK, we have lots of milkweed, but just not many monarchs. Still, it never hurts to plant milkweed and other flowers for monarchs and other butterflies. They need all the help they can get.

I noticed butterfly numbers dropping (not just monarchs, though their population seems like it has dropped the most) once the use of Bt-enhanced/engineered corn came into wide use. I feel like that has had a bigger impact on the butterfly population that any other single thing. How in the world anyone thought they could put Bt in corn seed and not have it affect butterflies in the areas where the corn is grown is totally beyond me.

I have gardened here in OK for 15 years and I try to garden as organically as possible. Even though Bt is organic and is commonly used by organic gardeners and farmers to control caterpillars on many crops, I hardly use it at all. I have only sprayed it on my entire garden one year out of the 15 years we've been here. I don't like using it because I enjoy having butterflies and moths flying around and don't want to do anything that will harm them. In the one year I used it, we had a severe caterpillar (cut worms, army worms and others) infestation across the entire state and they were devastating gardens and farms. I had to use it that year or just let the caterpillars eat up the entire garden before the plants could even get large enough to produce any harvest, but I hated using it and I tried to keep it off the flowers I grow for the butterflies. It is frustrating to know that there are plenty of organic or mostly organic gardeners like me who don't even want to use Bt, but then there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres planted with crops that have had Bt inserted into their seeds. No matter how hard the "little guys" like us try to avoid practices that harm the monarchs and other butterflies and moths, our efforts are strongly negated by the use of GMO Bt seeds used in commercial agriculture.

I would like to think that the American people are paying attention to the loss of butterfly habitat and to the damage being done to them with the over-reliance on Bt, especially in Bt crops, and that we will take action to save the butterflies. Realistically speaking, though, as long as Bt-enhanced corn is available, many commercial farmers will use it. I feel like the poor monarchs don't stand a chance.

When we mow our pastures, we mow around the milkweed (which used to drive Tim crazy because it ruined his perfectly-mowed grassy areas, but he finally got on board with the need to do it) ,and I plant milkweed in our fenced-in gardens, but it won't make much difference if there aren't monarchs around to enjoy it. We all should do what we can to help the butterflies and moths, and that includes commercial agriculture, but I am worried that irreversible harm has occurred and that the monarch population will not recover to its pre-Bt-era numbers.

Dawn

My milkweed seeds are on the way.