Pesticides kill more than the intended target.
I have milkweed all over my town lot. Haven’t really seen too many monarchs tho, and no caterpillars or cocoons so far (years)… might have too much residual chemical from other people using stuff even tho I don’t.
Kids seem to like it, the adults in the area don’t care for it much though ;)
Some towns regularly spray insecticides to kill mosquitoes too. That tends to kill all sorts of stuff, not just the mosquitoes.
I’m like 90% certain my area doesn’t do that, simply because there’s a river straight down the middle of the town, and we have a lot of conservation programs (some funded through property tax) and stuff as a result. Plus the river itself (a superfund site) has been a cleanup project for decades, so they have to be pretty careful.
But I may be wrong. Who knows. If they do spray, it certainly isn’t helping knock down the mosquitos. Or gnats. So many gnats.
Monsanto?
Per the article:
Especially detrimental, the researchers found, was a class of widely used insecticides called neonicotinoids that are absorbed into the tissues of plants.
So yes, Monsanto, as well as other firms which manufacture and sell that class of pesticide.
Monsanto’s Roundup also caused a big drop in monarch populations, because Roundup means that there is a lot less milkweed, but that effect already bottomed out, since it’s used almost everywhere already.
