Monarch butterfly feasting on Native narrow-leaf milkweed (Asclepias fasicularis) before moving onto the cocoon stage and migratory flight.
People should cultivate and plant native plants like native milkweed, not colonizer milkweed. Colonizer milkweed is sold at corporate outlets like Home Depot probably because of the nice bright orange flowers it has, but because this non-native variety of milkweed flowers during winter, it confuses monarch butterflies in Southern CA to stick around instead of following their DNA programming to migrate southward. It’s one of many things including pollution and decimation of the native plant population that is causing a dramatic decline in the monarch butterfly population, part of the great mass extinction underway at the hands of human civilization and capitalist greed.
The decline of native plant life is directly correlated with ecosystem decline and genocide of Native peoples. There are too many that pretend this isn’t the case and contribute to the weaponization of native plant promotion and co-optation of that positive sentiment while de-centering the voices and interests of real Native human beings. In Southern CA, this includes dozens of brown-skinned Mexican American pretendian grifters stealing public funds under false identity under concocted “tribal” names like “Tongva” and “Kizh.”
