Culture » December 5, 2012 Fall of the Monarchs Can we save
North America’s most beloved butterfly? A University of
Minnesota study linked the monarch decline to glyphosate, aka
Roundup. In the United States, 94,000 tons of the herbicide are
applied each year. As a girl growing up on the outskirts of
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Debbie Jackson looked forward every May to
hopping on her bike, pedaling to nearby fields and collecting
the just-laid eggs of monarch butterflies from milkweed plants.
“I saw countless orange-and black monarchs flitting through the
wildflowers then, and could find their eggs, take them home, and
hatch them easily,” says Jackson. “But that was 40 years ago,
before the monarchs started to die.” Today, living on 10 acres
outside Davisburg, Mich., Jackson grows four types of milkweed
in a “butterfly garden” and fills her house with plastic
containers in which she hatches butterfly eggs. Jackson spends
more time on butterflies than on her part-time finance job
because she is alarmed by the monarch