The Avalanche are looking to improve their record to 9-8-0 and get their 4th straight win at home. The Kings come to Denver after dropping a 3-1 loss to Pacific Division rival Calgary Flames.

Two powerful market leaders are joining together to form one powerhouse partnership. Hospeco Brands Group, a United States-based, full line manufacturer of personal care, cleaning and protection products to serve the janitorial, industrial supply, automotive, foodservice, health care and hospitality markets, is announcing a merger with Monarch Brands, wholesaler and manufacturer of microfiber, commercial laundry linen, institutional textiles and wiping products.

True Teak is grown in the highlands of Thailand on plantations that are specially managed for longer life cycles of 25 to 30 years

The beloved butterflies had fallen to critical levels in recent years. Experts weigh in on what might be causing their remarkable return.

When monarch butterflies migrate, they produce one of the most iconic wildlife spectacles in the world — and provide us with an important indicator of ecological health, says photographer Jaime Rojo. Telling a story about our relationship to the natural world, he shares his experience photographing these mesmerizing insects deep in their remote mountain habitats in Mexico, diving into the latest research into the mysteries of their multi-thousand-mile journey and sharing how each of us can join the growing movement to protect them.

Jun 2, 2024

Ethnic cleansing is not only a modern phenomenon. The medieval Catholic Church saw non-Christians as a threat and facilitated the ethnoreligious cleansing of Muslim and Jewish communities across Western Europe. Three conditions made this possible: The rising power of the papacy as a supranational religious authority; its dehumanization of non-Christians; and competition among Catholic Western European monarchs that left them vulnerable to papal-clerical demands to eradicate non-Christians. These findings revise our understanding twentieth- and twenty-first-century ethnic cleansing in places like Cambodia, Iraq, Myanmar, the Soviet Union, and Syria.

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020.

Manchester : Manchester University Press, [2016]

Warming temperatures may mean more generations of monarch butterflies in North America during summer months, say scientists who recently finished experiments with monarch caterpillars and […]

The post Warming temperatures may mean more monarch generations in some areas of North America appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Spending time in a beautiful garden can be transformative. In fact, some visitors to the Smithsonian’s Mary Livingston Ripley Garden in Washington D.C. have taken […]

The post Monarch Butterflies Make the Most of the Smithsonian’s Gardens appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

File: Western monarch butterfly in Huntington Beach; Credit: Courtesy of Huntington Beach Tree Society

A group of conservation organizations teamed up with a leading monarch butterfly scientist on Tuesday to petition for protection of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.

The monarch butterfly is one of the most iconic butterfly species in the country. But according to conservation group the Xerces Society, the monarch butterfly population is in trouble.

“Many scientists estimate that there are about 33 million monarchs. And just for comparison, in the past, researchers have estimated more than 1 billion monarchs,” said Sarina Jepsen, who directs the Endangered Species Program for the Xerces Society.

That’s a decline of about 90 percent in just fewer than 20 years, Jepsen said.

The main culprit in the monarch’s decline is the weed killer Roundup, Jepsen said. Most monarch caterpillars breed in the Midwest, and feed off of milkweed. While Roundup doesn’t kill genetically modified crops like soy and corn, it does kill milkweed.

“So, milkweed growing in a large agricultural landscape has largely disappeared in the last decade-and-a-half to two decades,” said Jepsen.

Other contributing factors include climate change and a general loss of habitat, Jepsen said. California’s drought might also play a role.

“There’s a real strong relationship between drought severity and the number of monarchs that we see in the winter on the California coast,” said Jepsen. “In years when droughts are worse, there are fewer monarchs.”

Thousands of the butterflies gather on California’s coast each winter. Spots locally includeLeo Carrillo Beach in Malibu and Doheny Beach in Dana Point, though the Xerces Society has observed a large decline in the butterflies at these locations in the last several decades.

More on the drought’s effect on the monarch population will be known around Thanksgiving, when a group of so-called "citizen scientists" with the Xerces Society perform an annual count of the monarchs.

Along with the Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food and Safety and leading monarch butterfly scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed the petition.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to decide whether to go forward with a further review to potentially classify the monarch butterfly as threatened or endangered. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

It's widely planted to slow the butterflies' decline, but a recent study suggests monarchs' misfortune goes well beyond milkweed loss.

Video shows Monarch Butterflies stopping in Colorado at John Martin Reservoir State Park as they migrate to Mexico.

The western monarch population may be on the verge of collapsing.

The charismatic and familiar monarch butterfly serves as a flagship species for pollinator conservation, and gives rights-of-way entities opportunities to engage a diverse array of stakeholders who are invested in not only restoring monarch numbers to sustainable levels, but also mitigating many other environmental and economic issues. This pre-publication draft of the TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 942 Pre-Pub: Evaluating the Suitability of Roadway Corridors fo...

QUEEN ELIZABETH II, 94, is the world's best-travelled monarch and has visited countries all over the world. Prince Philip, 98, often joins her on her many travels - but there's one thing he hates.

YOUNG Princess Elizabeth's night out celebrating VE Day on the streets of London helped turn her into a Queen like no other.

Monarch butterflies are dying at an alarming rate around the world -- a looming extinction that could also put human life at risk. But we have just the thing to help save these insects, says author Mary Ellen Hannibal: citizen scientists. Learn how these grassroots volunteers are playing a crucial role in measuring and rescuing the monarch's dwindling population -- and how you could join their ranks to help protect nature. (You'll be in good company: Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist!)

As monarchs leave their winter hideaways, conservationists are seeking assistance in studying their migration routes

In the wild, only about one in 20 caterpillars grows up to be a butterfly

Today, Smithfield Foods and Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE) announced that they have formed a joint venture called Monarch Bioenergy to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) across Smithfield’s hog farms in Missouri.

Myriam Franzke, Christian Kraus, David Dreyer, Keram Pfeiffer, M. Jerome Beetz, Anna L. Stöckl, James J. Foster, Eric J. Warrant, and Basil el Jundi

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are prominent for their annual long-distance migration from North America to their overwintering area in Central Mexico. To find their way on this long journey, they use a sun compass as their main orientation reference but will also adjust their migratory direction with respect to mountain ranges. This indicates that the migratory butterflies also attend to the panorama to guide their travels. While the compass has been studied in detail in migrating butterflies, little is known about the orientation abilities of non-migrating butterflies. Here we studied if non-migrating butterflies - that stay in a more restricted area to feed and breed - also use a similar compass system to guide their flights. Performing behavioral experiments on tethered flying butterflies in an indoor LED flight simulator, we found that the monarchs fly along straight tracks with respect to a simulated sun. When a panoramic skyline was presented as the only orientation cue, the butterflies maintained their flight direction only during short sequences suggesting that they potentially use it for flight stabilization. We further found that when we presented the two cues together, the butterflies incorporate both cues in their compass. Taken together, we here show that non-migrating monarch butterflies can combine multiple visual cues for robust orientation, an ability that may also aid them during their migration.

Boris Johnson is having an audience with the Queen by video link – his first conversation with the Monarch since he fell ill with coronavirus three weeks ago.

As Queen Elizabeth II turns 94 today, we reminisce about her greatest-ever looks

Here is an interesting buisness idea; grow butterflies to let fly at special ocasions and at the same time help the enviornment as well as people with special needs. The project is called Mariposeando (Spanish for something

Our photo of the day comes from northern Illinois.

RICHARD KAY: For both parties it looked like a marriage made in heaven - a classic case of opposites attracting.

Appearing on This Morning, Camilla Tominey said that Kate Middleton is the person who needs to modernise the monarchy in the wake of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's departure.

Kyle and Jackie O's resident psychic, Georgina Walker, predicts that Megxit spells nothing but trouble for the monarchy. 

EXCLUSIVE: Sue Hepworth has claimed she put the question - 'Is the monarchy fit for purpose?' - forward to be used by host Julie Etchingham as she grilled Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson.

He's just been included in the esteemed Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Labour leadership challenger Lisa Nandy has said she would vote to abolish the monarchy at a referendum while rival Rebecca Long-Bailey refused to name a former party leader she admired.

Amy Schumer took to Instagram on Thursday to poke fun at Harry and Meghan in light of their decision to quit the monarchy for the US. 

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