All the Dirt on Gardening

Benjamin Vogt at The Deep Middle (http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com) wrote about Molly Ginty's piece called "The Fall of the Monarchs". http://inthesetimes.com/article/14215/fall_of_the_monarchs#.UL9fqMupMBI.facebook Ginty writes, " Scientists say that the downfall has been caused in small part by environmental factors, but mostly by two types of human meddling: the use of herbicides that are killing off milkweed plants in the United States, and the illegal logging of the pine and fir trees on which the monarchs make their homes for five months of the winter in central Mexico." (By the way, not all scientists agree about Mexican logging being a contributing factor.) But this is interesting, "Monarch butterflies warn of what might lie ahead for other wild creatures affected by overfarming and deforestation,” says Chip Taylor, professor of insect ecology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who founded Monarch Watch in 1992. “It’s clear that this ye...