(This post was on the laptop for editing when the laptop was quickly closed and moved indoors, before the Internet went completely dead, during the big storm early Monday morning.)
Actually I spent a large part of this weekend in bed, half awake, with complications from a chemical reaction that were uncomfortable enough to prevent real sleep while I still felt too sleepy to do much of anything useful; nothing life-threatening but nothing remotely like enjoying the lovely spring air. The only spring flowers I had a chance to enjoy were the ground-ivy and the first few daffodils in the not-a-lawn and the Fantastic Feral Elberta Peach Tree out on the property line. (Nothing ever gets that little tree down; despite the cold nights of winter, which have guaranteed that most local peach trees won't produce fruit this year, it is covered in bright pink blooms.) Grump grump grump. I was so grumpy I even yelled at Serena-cat, who was so perturbed by being yelled at that she didn't even show me the mouse that got into the office, although she caught it. Link hunting on Sunday afternoon feels like a step toward full recovery. I expect to be fit for yard work by Monday.
Serena, however, says I'm still below par and need careful observation. Humans are a frail, nervous, rather tiresome species, she says, apt to make loud noises when exposed to mundane annoyances like fires, insects, and wet shoes, but when they shout at cats their condition must be extremely bad.
Animals
For those who've been enjoying the butterfly posts, which the computer shows people are doing, but wondering...Yes, considering all the species in alphabetical order does mean that the majority of the butterflies we've discussed aren't even found on your continent--whichever one that is. (Yes, the butterfly posts are read on all the continents where butterflies live. So far the computer has not reported this web site's being read on Antarctica.) Yes, because science is global and legislation is local, "Well that's nice that we're informing African readers about African butterfly species, but what the bleep does that have to do with glyphosate?"
In some African countries glyphosate is a very serious problem; remember, one of the glyphosate e-books I recommend everyone read comes from Africa. The sovereignty of individual nations has given some people blessed relief from glyphosate and other mistakes a majority of humankind have made. That's one reason why we should not grant any global organization any authority to do anything beyond offering mediation services as an alternative to war. (And of course, if the global organization bogs down in an outdated, discredited ideology that has become a substitute for religion for those who bought into it, and fails to offer viable answers to countries that seek mediation services, then we have the current UN mess, with the would-be global dictators issuing their diktats on topics they should know they have nothing to do with, while the globe erupts in wars, and the Trumpistas' call for defunding the UN does sound like a reasonable business decision...but I digress.)
In other countries glyphosate may not even be an issue relevant to protecting local butterfly species. In some countries glyphosate is already banned. In those countries butterflies are presumably more threatened by other things. As we're seeing, some butterflies seem to be in great danger, either because changes to their environment are threatening their existence or because they're so rare that the local subspecies' survival may depend on twenty individual insects. Other species seem to be well adjusted to their environments, even as those environments change; some species have been thriving in suburbs for two hundred years. This web site can't judge or advise readers on what else may or may not be needed to protect every butterfly species on Earth.
You, the individual reader, must use information about your local butterflies to protect them from threats to their existence. All we can say about butterflies generally, worldwide, is that they're not pests; they are beneficial to sustainable agriculture, because they're composters or pollinators or both; and nearly all of them are totally dependent on "weeds" to survive. So the first consideration, wherever butterfly populations decline, is making sure that people aren't spraying pesticides that kill those "weeds" even when the "weeds" are in their proper places and ought to be appreciated as native plants.
It goes further. As we've seen, in many places beloved butterfly species live in total symbiotic relationships with vines that grow in deep dark forests. What happens when forests are lost to excessive logging or urbanization? Right. The last thing people living on Nicobar island need is American keyboard warriors telling them what to do. I respect that. Readers on Nicobar island are adults and can work out for yourselves what you need to do. This web site only reports information.
But here, from the analytical and teacherly mind of Elizabeth Barrette, is a summary of what readers can be doing on behalf of butterflies--generally, nationwide or worldwide, wherever you are:
I'd posted comments before the last big browser crash, which means I'm retrieving the link after EB's had time to post informative replies. So the link is not as new as it should have been when it appeared here, but it's been enriched with extra facts.
Communication
I saw it on Joe Jackson's blog. Google traces it to somebody called Lanhdanan on Imgur.
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