Mexico hopes to see 3-4 times more monarch butterflies

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MARK STEVENSON

PIEDRA HERRADA, Mexico (AP) — The number of monarch butterflies reaching their wintering grounds in central Mexico this year may be three to four times higher than the previous season, authorities said Thursday.

Speaking during a visit to a monarch reserve with U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Mexican Environment Secretary Rafael Pacchiano said initial reports suggest the butterfly population is rebounding.

"We estimate that the butterfly population that arrives at the reserve is as much as three and could reach four times the surface area it occupied last season," Pacchiano said.

He did not explain how the government made the calculation, but authorities conduct informal tracking of monarch butterflies as they enter Mexico from the United States.

FULL story at link.



A guide holds up a damaged and dying butterfly at the monarch butterfly reserve in Piedra Herrada, Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015. The number of monarch butterflies reaching their wintering grounds in central Mexico this year may be three or four times higher than the previous year, authorities said Thursday. The population of orange-and-black butterflies, which migrate to Mexico from the U.S. and Canada, has declined in recent years. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4a2029a550f84cd89d7f3a53dcd616cd/mexico-hopes-see-3-or-4-times-more-monarch-butterflies

[herding cats]

1. It's a step in the right direction.

According to the article they used to cover "44 acres (18 hectares)", and may get up to "3 or 4 hectares (7.8 to 9.9 acres) this year."

I'll take any increase though, and I'll keep growing my milkweed for them every year.

[Hortensis]

2. Wonderful to read, thanks. We used to travel down to Baja each year

just around the time of the migration. Hundreds of miles of millions of butterfies on the move.

Each fall in Georgia, solid yellow butterflies flutter south down the long "lawn" (of mowed whatever) that curves around our hill and stop at our salvias before continuing their migration. Here in Florida, here they are, fluttering around this "lawn" all day long. Not in nearly the numbers we're sure they should be, though.

[haikugal]

3. I'm so happy to hear this!

I'll keep growing milkweed and goldenrod for them. I saw more Monarch's this year than I have for a while. I hope they continue to rebound.

[sorechasm]

4. Barbara Kingsolver will be happy to hear that if true.

Audubon
From the MagazineJanuary– February 2013
Barbara Kingsolver and Butterflies
Novelist Barbara Kingsolver tackles global warming.

By Michele Berger
January-February 2013
Popular Stories

What would happen if monarch butterflies suddenly appeared at the wrong overwintering site? That’s the scenario Barbara Kingsolver paints in her captivating new novel, Flight Behavior, in which she explores why climate change is such a divisive issue.

What big question were you trying to answer?
I’ve been asking myself for some time now: How can we all be looking at climate change and believe different things about it? That’s the question I wanted to explore. It’s an effort to understand how we’ve gotten stuck in these two teams, which has to do with family and the social grouping in which you’re born and raised. There’s a lot of science behind the notion that we are more intuitive than we are rational. That’s what this book is about really.

Why the monarch butterfly as a bellwether?
I woke up one morning with a vision of 15 million monarchs roosting in a forested hollow in the county where I live. And I knew that would be a fantastic way to tell the story, to create a freak biological event that would look like disaster to the biologically trained onlookers and would look like a beautiful miracle to everyone else.

Photo: Photograph by Joel Sartore


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