Subject: Monarch Butterfly Update

From: [email-masked] (graciela)
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 18:28:54 GMT

This article appeared in the Wednesday, May 29th issue of The Globe and
Mail (Canada's National Newspaper):

      Monarchs in trouble on northern journey
  Good news on butterflies surviving snow storm overshadowed 
  by latest findings

                    BY SEAN SILCOFF
                    The Globe and Mail

Researchers who said 20 million monarch butterflies died during a snow storm
in Mexico five months ago now say they greatly overestimated the death count. 

But that piece of good news has been overtaken by more recent, disturbing
observations: Field researchers along the northward migratory path of the
insects east of the Rocky Mountains report drastic reductions in the numbers
of heading north on their annual spring journey.  They usually arrive in
Ontario by early June - a few have been spotted in Southern Ontario in the
past two weeks - and stay until late August.       

Researcher Gary Ross wrote last month to Journey North News, a World Wide
Web site that tracks the monarchs' migration, to say he was "shocked" to
discover almost no evidence of butterfly visits in a part of southwest
Louisiana usually aflutter with them.  

"Out of 150 [milkweed] plants I checked, I saw no monarch eggs on any of the
plants," Mr. Ross wrote of his research in the Cameron Parish wetland.
Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on that plant, considered a noxious weed
in several provinces and states. "What's more, only two plants had any
evidence of having been eaten by caterpillars.  Normally, caterpillars would
have eaten from at least 75 per cent of the plants."

And he spotted only two butterflies during his two days in the field; he
usually sees dozens. Field studies in Texas and Florida, along the
butterflies' route, yielded similar results. 

The butterflies "encountered some pretty rough conditions" that hampered
reproduction as they moved into drought-ridden Texas in March, said Orley
(Chip) Taylor, an entomologist at the University of Kansas and the founder
of Monarch Watch, an international organization dedicated to the survival of
the species.

Please see Monarchs / A6
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Monarchs off to poor start on northern migration
* From Page Al

"They're off to a very poor start this year," he said in an interview
yesterday. Another leading monarch researcher in the United States, Lincoln
Brower of the University of Florida, said yesterday that he expects this
will be the lowest fall migration since he began monitoring the insects'
migration in the learly 1980s. 

A cold spring also has been blamed for delaying the growth of milkweed and
nectar-laden wild fowers, from which the butterflies feed. However,
researchers say they won't know until later this summer how well the
resilient butterflies which lay up to 400 eggs before dying rebound from
what so far has been a disastrous year.

In early January, scientists and environmental organizations reported that a
wet, windy snow storm had knocked millions of butterflies off their
clustered in roosts in oyamel fir trees in the transvolcanic mountain range
east of Mexico City.  Between 60 million and 500 million butterflies make
their winter homes in the Mexican mountains.

Researchers predicted then that up to one-third of the butterflies carpeting
the ground could die as result of the storm.  

But in a recent newsletter, Dr. Brower said the early estimates on "the
severity of the storm were mistaken". He now pegs the number of butterflies
killed at about one million. 

Many of those knocked down during the storm, revived and flew back to their
roosts when warmer weather returned, Dr. Brower wrote in the May issue of
the Monarch Newsletter.

But, he added, the storm may have killed more of the butterflies with the
orange, black and white wings in areas other than the one he and his
researchers studied. 

Dr. Brower called the winter storm, the second in four years, a bad omen
indicative of the effects Mexico's of human activity on butterfly habitat.

"Thinning and deforestation is increasing the exposure of the overwintering
butterflies.  This makes them more vulnerable to the frost, snow and rain
that accompanies these heavy winter storms," he wrote. 

In a telephone interview yesterday, Dr. Brower said he does not hold out
much hope for the long-term survival of the butterfly's pan-generational
migration --  in which the great-great grandchildren of the butterflies that
went south a year earlier trace the same route the next year. 

"I don't think anybody has the will to organize themselves and save this
butterfly,- he said.  "The time has come to stop fiddling around with the
idea we're going to do something to save what he calls the endangered
biological phenomenon of the monarch's migrational pattern.

"The navigational system [of the monarch] is more complex than anythmg
humans have ever made.  The basic knowledge to understand this mechanism
could be lost if the migration route spanning thousands of kilometres is
extinguished."

Dr. Brower called the Mexico overwintering site the Achilles' heel of the
migration process, saying the government does an inadequote job of
protecting the insects from the nearby human population - which has few
other econoinic resources to draw from other than timber.

Pesticide use and urban development throughout North America, and the
burning of unwanted vegetation near the wintering sites by Mexicans, also
have been identified as hazards to the butterflies' survival.

Dr. Taylor said Canada, the United States and Mexico should work together to
create employment for people in the areas near the wintering sites while "at
the same time protecting the butterflies.  These people need to have an
alternative to cutting down the trees".

He said a recent agreement between Canada and Mexico to perform more
research and monitoring of butterfly habitats was a good start.

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