Presence of monarch butterflies in their wintering habitat drops 22% in one year

The Eastern migratory monarch butterfly is at risk: new reports show a sharp population decline and a loss of habitat in the forests where they winter each year. In just one year, the presence of monarch butterflies in their wintering grounds dropped 22%, from 7 acres to nearly 5.5. acres. This is part of a mostly downward trend over the past 25 years—when monarchs once covered more than 45 acres of forest.

Every year, Eastern monarch butterflies travel up to 2,800 miles from Canada and the US to their wintering sites in the forests of Mexico. There, in what is known as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, monarchs cluster in shelter from winds, rain, and low temperatures.

Monarchs require a vast, healthy migratory path and large, robust forests for survival through the winter. Today, the butterflies face a reduction of breeding habitat in the US due to herbicide application and land use changes as well as forest degradation in wintering sites in Mexico. Extreme weather conditions in all these ecosystems can further their decline.

By Michaela Haas

A few years ago, Jorge Romero walked his daughter, Mariangel, to school every morning, and every afternoon he accompanied her home. She was 13 at the time, and the 2.5-mile trek in Galapa, a town on the outskirts of Barranquilla, Colombia, was "too dangerous for a girl to walk on her own," Romero explains. The family couldn't afford other means of transportation. But walking his daughter to school meant that Romero, a day laborer, missed out on getting in the labor queue early enough to grab opportunities to work.

Like many families in Galapa, the Romeros are refugees from Venezuela who depleted their savings making the journey. Nine family members share a simple two-bedroom home. The family sleeps in one bedroom, reserving the other to store their few prized possessions — including the bicycle Mariangel received from World Bicycle Relief that gave her a new way to get to school. The family's hopes now rest on Mariangel to complete her education, thrive, and help support them. As one relative put it, that bicycle is a godsend.

World Bicycle Relief, a Chicago-based nonprofit started in 2005, has given away more than 684,000 bicycles in 21 countries, most of them in Africa. "Bicycles are a really overlooked tool for people to access opportunities," CEO Dave Neiswander says via a video call from his field office in Zambia. "There's a billion people that are challenged to find reliable transportation. Bicycles are a very efficient way for them to help themselves, which is what intrigued me from the beginning."

By Diana Schoberg

In 2011, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee was in Oslo, Norway, waiting in a room with a few friends before she delivered her Nobel lecture.

Gbowee had lived in a refugee camp, worked as a counselor for child soldiers, and led a nonviolent peace movement that played a pivotal role in ending a bloody 14-year period of civil war in Liberia. But still, they asked her, “What’s next?” “

My answer was simple,” she recalls. “Duh, I just won the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m going to retire at 39. They said, ‘No, you’re still young. Think.’ The only thing I could think about in that moment was girls and education.”

She went on to found Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, which focuses on just that. Since its inception in 2012, the organization has awarded more than 500 full scholarships to African young people, most of them women, to study across Africa, Europe, and North America. It has also provided support to schools in Ghana and Liberia that benefited almost 2,000 students. The foundation has held campaigns to inspire and train women and young people to help maintain Liberia's peace. It has moved beyond the classroom to do work in sexual health and reproductive rights, and produced radio programs that encourage discussion about gender-based violence.

By Bryan Smith

Break, break Bulldog-6, Bulldog-6. Where are you?

Bulldog-6, come in Bulldog-6

Bulldog-6 ... Come in

Bulldog ...

Tom ...

The family of Jacob Lowell had arrived early. They milled about for a while and then sat on the folding chairs they had arranged at the edge of a vast expanse of grass. Spread before them, in precisely laid-out rows, stretched a landscape of identically shaped headstones, bone white against the green. More people arrived: in jeans and garrison hats, in ball caps with crossed rifles stitched in gold, and in T-shirts bearing slogans like, "Remember Our Fallen Heroes." They shook hands and embraced, sometimes weeping, sometimes chatting, sometimes simply standing in silence before one of the many markers casting slanted shadows under a mostly cloudless sky.

They had been told to be at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, at 1 p.m., and now, the hour having arrived, they turn their gaze down a long driveway. There they spot the man for whom they have been waiting. Gripping the handlebars of his custom-painted Specialized Aethos Pro bike, he coasts the last couple of hundred yards to where the people have gathered.

Fifteen years earlier, Private First Class Jacob Lowell, 22, had been on patrol in Gowhardesh, Afghanistan, when insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade into his Humvee. When he and the other members in his squad jumped out to return fire, a bullet ripped into his leg, spraying blood and muscle. Despite that, Lowell managed to climb back into the Humvee, heave himself into the vehicle's turret, and seize the twin handles of the mounted .50-caliber machine gun. He was blasting the attackers when a second, fatal shot hit him in the chest. He died 2 June 2007, only a few days after the arrival of the new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kolenda, the man now stepping off his bike at the Illinois cemetery.

Editor’s Note: In 2010, the Fargo-Moorhead Rotary Foundation, which is supported by five Rotary clubs in the Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, USA, area, raised 100 percent of the funds needed to build a Miracle Field in Moorhead. Keith Brokke shares how they were able to make an impact with their project.

By Keith Brokke, past governor of District 5580 (Minnesota, North Dakota, USA) and a member of the Rotary Club of Fargo-Moorhead AM

In the spring of 2010, a Rotary member came to us with the idea to build a Miracle Field, a special field with a rubberized, barrier-free turf that allows children with disabilities to play baseball safely. We had previously built a universal playground five years before in Fargo to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Rotary. We felt a Miracle Field was a good fit for our Fargo-Moorhead Rotary Foundation.

Since we had worked successfully with the Fargo Park District in the earlier project, we decided to approach the Moorhead Parks & Recreation department for the Miracle Field. We knew that it is important early in the planning process to design a project for results. Part of a well-planned project is working closely with partners who also have a stake in the outcome. We learned that the Moorhead Parks and Recreation department had already done a needs assessment and wanted to build a Miracle Field, but faced budget constraints. They were ecstatic when the Fargo-Moorhead Foundation offered to build the field.

Part of a well-planned project is working closely with partners who also have a stake in the outcome.

Back in 2005, the Fargo park district had promised to finance our universal playground interest-free and provide maintenance if we raised all the funds to build it. We got a similar agreement with Moorhead. We were able to raise 90 percent of the $254,000 total needed by June 2010.

Pukaite Woods at Rotary Park has been trimmed by an unlikely landscaping crew since 2020: a herd of goats! Now the Mequon-Thiensville (M-T) Sunrise Rotary Club is seeking public help to bring the goats back to continue the woodland restoration.

The future of Pukaite Woods is dependent on the reproduction of all the native trees that make it such a unique and enjoyable place for children and adults who walk the trails. Removing invasive species like buckthorn has been an uphill battle over the years.

The goats are kept in 1-acre to 2-acre paddocks enclosed with electrical mesh fencing to keep the goats in and to keep predators and people out. Once the goats eat all the leaves off the buckthorn and thistle plant in that area, they move on to the next paddock.

The leafless buckthorn plants will use the energy in their root system to grow back. Once the leaves grow back, the goats are brought back to graze again. Throughout the two grazing sessions, the energy in the buckthorn's root system is slowly depleted, starving the roots before they go into winter dormancy.

There are costs to rent the goats, fencing and transportation annually. The Rotary and OWLT have donated over $40,000 to the goat project since 2020. Please help the M-T Sunrise Rotary bring the goats back and keep the woodland restoration going for the benefit of current and future generations to come.

Questions? Please contact Matt Wolf at: mwolf@mtsd.k12.wi.us.

Donate today: https://gofund.me/9dd74a07