Bring Back Bees to Mexico's Degraded Farmlands

Filmmaker, Louie Schwartzberg has spent a lifetime filming time lapsed photos of flowers and the birds, butterflies, bees and bats that ensure the survival of both those flowers and our human species. One third of the food we eat requires animal and insect pollinators traveling from plant to plant in order to produce and reproduce.

'Nature had invented reproduction as mechanism for life to move forward as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life.' – Louie Schwartsberg

It all begins with a flower.

Flowering plants have male parts called stamens that produce a sticky powder called pollen. They also have a female part called the pistil. The top of the pistil is called the stigma, it is also often sticky. Seeds are made at the base of the pistil, in the ovule.

To be pollinated, pollen must be moved from the male parts to the female parts, otherwise from the stamen to the stigma. When pollen from a plant pollinates itself, it is called self-pollination. When pollen is transferred to a different plant, it is called cross-pollination. Cross-pollination produces stronger plants. It is important to note that the plants must be of the same species. For example, only pollen from an apple tree can pollinate another apple tree. Pollen from a daisy or a rose would not work.

It is only the pollinated plants that can produce fruit or seeds. Without pollination, the plants cannot reproduce. No pollination equals no fertilisation which alas, results in: no food (at least not real food).

Plants can be pollinated by humans, but plants aren’t relying on humans for this. The bigger job comes accidentally from creatures who are looking for food from the plant. As they creep inside the plant for a taste of its nectar, the pollen lands on their bodies and when they visit another plant for more food, the pollen rubs off and that plant becomes pollinated.

Pollinators include - bees, butterflies, moths, flies, hummingbirds, most insects and vertebrates, humans, water and wind. Most experts say insects play the biggest role.

According to a source, more than 200,000 animal species serve as pollinators. Pollination is responsible for providing humans with a wide variety of food - mainly fruits, vegetables and flowers. The pollinator can sometimes be predicted by a plant’s colour, fragrance or shape, but just imagine how that one pollinator impacts the thousands upon thousands of ecosystems around it. And to just think, the plants strive to be a source of nourishment for others so that they can continue to exist. It’s all about food.

Please share this beautiful story with friends via facebook and twitter. Send them to http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/bring-back-bees-and-birds-to-mexicos-degraded-lands/

You can watch a clip from this documentary, Wings of Life on YouTube. And don't forget to come back here to Global Giving and chip in the help Mexican farmers build and preserve pollinator sanctuaries on their farms.

You can also watch Schwartzberg's 2011 TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_the_hidden_beauty_of_pollination.html

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer, The Farmers Market Gazette, March 15, 2013. Also published in Common Dreams on March 14, 2013.

The migratory population of the monarch butterfly has reached an “ominous” low, researchers in Mexico announced Wednesday.

Scientists are attributing the decline of this essential pollinating population to the ongoing drought and the “explosive” increase in the use of genetically modified crops in the American corn belt.

“Because farmers have planted over 120 million acres of crops resistant to the milkweed-killing herbicide glyphosate, the monarchs’ essential food supply has been all but destroyed.”

Released by the Mexican government along with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a recent survey found a 59% decrease in the area occupied by monarch colonies wintering in the forests of central Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Because of the difficulty in counting butterflies, scientists rely on measurements of the area that butterflies occupy to estimate their numbers; 1 hectare may contain as many as 50 million butterflies.

“The report of the dwindling Monarch butterfly winter residence in Mexico is ominous,” said leading entomologist Lincoln Brower.

According to Chip Taylor, director of the conservation group Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, the decline was “hastened” by North America’s ongoing drought and record-breaking heat.

However, the more “alarming” source of decline, according to Taylor and Omar Vidal, head of WWF in Mexico, is the “explosive increase” in the use of herbicide-tolerant genetically modified soybean and corn crops across America’s farmland which, the New York Times reports, has “enabled farmers to wipe out the milkweed,” on which monarch larvae feed almost exclusively.

“The American Midwest’s corn belt is a critical feeding ground for monarchs, which once found a ready source of milkweed growing between the rows of millions of acres of soybean and corn,” they continue. However, as farmers have planted over 120 million acres of crops resistant to the milkweed-killing herbicide glyphosate, the monarchs’ essential food supply is all but destroyed.

“That habitat is virtually gone. We’ve lost well over 120 million acres, and probably closer to 150 million acres,” Mr. Taylor said.

Previously, environmental groups cited logging in Mexico’s forests, the butterfly’s winter habitat, as the primary threat to the population. Since the area was declared a nature reserve in 2000, that is now considered a lesser threat.

“The conservation of the Monarch butterfly is a shared responsibility between Mexico, the United States and Canada,”said Vidal. “By protecting the reserves and having practically eliminated large-scale illegal logging, Mexico has done its part. It is now necessary for the United States and Canada to do their part and protect the butterflies’ habitat in their territories.”

Like bees, butterflies provide essential pollinating functions for entire ecosystems.”The fruits, nuts, seeds and foliage that everything else feeds on,” said Taylor. “If we pull the monarchs out of the system, we’re really pulling the rug out from under a whole lot of other species.”

According to Nature World News,

the Monarch butterflies begin life as an egg that hatch into larvae (which feed almost exclusively on the milkweed plant). These larvae become caterpillars and in the fourth stage they become butterflies. Only Monarchs born between late summer and early fall make the migration. Even though it takes about four generations of the Monarchs to make the incredible journey, each butterfly knows the way and at times, these butterflies have been found to come back to the same tree from where their great grandparents had begun the journey.

“This is one of the world’s great migrations,” said Chip Taylor. “It would be a shame to lose it.”

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Links:

• Read the article in the Farmers Market Gazette