In summer, people in certain parts of the Midwest expect to see Monarch butterflies, but they’re becoming scarce. Experts think that this is because farm fields are now planted with genetically-modified corn and soybeans that are resistant to the herbicide Roundup, so farmers to spray the chemical over the entire crop in order to eradicate weeds. But when they do this, they also kill off the milkweed, which is the butterflies’ favorite food.
read more

We’ve been saying goodbye to the monarch butterfly for a long time now, and due to the clearing of land in the small, 217 square-mile area in central Mexico where they migrate to every winter, we may see the demise of this beautiful species very soon. Will we be saying goodbye to some birds as well?
read more

Unusually cold winters aren’t just happening in Europe and in the northeast U.S. Two inches of snow fell in the Zacatecas state of Mexico, where snow is almost never seen at all. This is part of a cold spell in Mexico this winter that has killed off 10% of the 100 million Monarch butterflies that are spending the winter there, before migrating back to the U.S. and Canada in the summer.

The butterflies have been frozen to branches by the icy winds. However, this is not their worst winter. Marco Hernandez, director of the Biosphere Reserve, where the Monarchs spend the winter, says, “In 2002, with (6 inches) of snow, we were walking on thick carpets of dead butterflies.”
read more

Monarch butterflies migrate 2,000 miles every year to spend the winter in a small mountain forest in Mexico, but this could end within the next 50 years. At first, farmers were cutting down the trees in order to clear the land, but this has finally been stopped. Now it’s been discovered that climate change may eventually kill off the oyamel fir trees that the butterflies cling to during the winter.

In The Independent, Steven Connor quotes researchers Karen Oberhauser and Townsend Peterson as saying that, “?When current oyamel distribution was included in models to be projected to future climates, none of the present wintering sites was predicted to be suitable in 50 years’ time.”
read more