Sunday, December 2, 2012
Beautiful Butterfly Video
There is some gorgeous imagery in this video, especially in the first half that I just had to share it. Youtube user 4af's channel consists mostly of him going around to various highway road stops to film the insect activity that most people just drive right past. There are also some of Monarch clusters in their winter huddling states in various trees out in California.
Towards the end of this video though he makes a comment that this diversity he's finding along side GMO corn and other crops doesn't seem to be effecting what we'd normally find in the roadside wildflowers. I'm not entirely up with the issue but my understanding is GMO and neonicotinoid treated crops WHEN USED CORRECTLY are beneficial to the environment. The idea is farmers aren't hosing their crops down every week with pesticides, this would eliminate the runoff. A lot of people have been against neonicotinoides from the start and are blaming them for pretty much the decline of bee and butterfly populations across the US and Europe. My understanding is, Yes the neonicotine is getting into the soil and being taken up by other plants that weren't intended to get it. Also in the case of corn it spews out of the dew at some times of the year and kills pretty much everything that eats it. Overall I don't think they're as bad as they're made out to be. Had the farmer been spraying his crops every week, the drift of the chemical would likely have coated some of these plants in the video and we probably wouldn't have seen half of the pollinators we saw.
Labels:
Bees,
Butterflies,
Farms,
Video