monarch (Page 2)

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, in the February 12 New York Times, reports that millions of Monarch butterflies lie dead in piles on the ground in their winter reserve in the mountains of Mexico. During a recent severe winter storm, between 220 and 270 million frozen butterflies fell from their roosts in the trees and now lie in piles more than a foot high.

?It was really macabre,? says butterfly biologist Dr. Lincoln Brower. ?I?ve been going down there for 25 years, and I?ve never seen anything like it.? This is the largest known die-off of Monarchs, but the loss is not expected to threaten the survival of the species, because other, smaller populations of Monarchs that do not migrate to Mexico can be found in the western United States.
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Reports that 22 million Monarch butterflies were killed by being sprayed with pesticide have been greatly exaggerated, according to the World Wildlife Fund and American Monarch researchers.

“It’s been overblown,” says Monica Missrie, Monarch butterfly coordinator for the WWF in Mexico City. “It was probably two or three million.”

Homero Aridjis, head of the environmental lobby Group of 100, told reporters he believed that loggers has sprayed the migration areas of the Monarchs with pesticides in order to reopen their sanctuary to logging.
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