Monarch Butterflies Lose Much of Their Wintering Grounds 
New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Authors:                  Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Pagination:               1

ISSN:                     03624331

Abstract:

Across the country now, monarchs are just beginning their fall migration,
an annual trek that takes the butterflies from across the central and eastern
United States and Canada down to the mountains of central Mexico. There
they roost as they have for millenniums, clustered in wintering areas sprinkled
throughout what were once dense, remote mountain forests. They remain there
until spring, when they fly north once again to breed. In each area, the
butterflies gather in huge roosting groups that thickly paper the fir trees
in the orange and black of their wings.

For example, Dr. [Lincoln P. Brower] said that in one region where there
has always been a large monarch colony, development has encroached to the
point that the once remote roosts of monarchs are now dangling in trees
right next to farm fields. This winter, the butterflies startled biologists
by abandoning the site, moving over the mountains to a more intact forest
area -- an increasingly rare commodity -- that they had never used before.

Scientists on the study collaborated with Mexico's Ministry of the Environment,
Natural Resources and Fisheries in the design of the new reserve, which,
they say, takes the biological needs of the monarch into much better account
than previous reserves. Previous protected areas were 40,000 acres in total
and dispersed over five sites. The proposed new reserve spans 140,000 contiguous
acres, more adequately covers known wintering sites and is intended to
protect not only the individual roosting areas but the watersheds of which
the forests are an integral part.
Copyright New York Times Company Sep 12, 2000

Full Text:

Over the past 20 years, biologists have voiced increasing concern about
the monarch butterfly's most threatened and critical habitat, a single
stretch of Mexican forest to which hundreds of millions of these butterflies
migrate from the United States each year to spend the winter. Yet in spite
of intense interest in this region, which is thought to be the species'
Achilles' heel, little had been known about how these forests were actually
faring.

Now an international team of researchers has reported that what was a broad
swath of thousands of acres of intact forest just 30 years ago has since
been reduced to peppered remnants in a sea of farms, homes, cattle-grazing
areas and logged and degraded woods. This has occurred even in areas designated
as protected monarch sanctuaries for more than a decade.

  The survey, the first scientific study of the monarchs' habitat in the
mountains of central Mexico, mapped forest changes using aerial photographs
taken over three decades. The findings, which were made available to The
New York Times, showed that only a little more than half of what was intact
forest remained. The rest has suffered some degree of degradation, from
minor logging to having had the forest entirely removed. The researchers
estimate that in 50 years, at the current rate of deforestation, nearly
all the original forest will be similarly degraded.

''From what I've seen there year after year, I predicted it would be bad
and getting worse,'' said Dr. Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch biologist at
Sweet Briar College who was an author of the new study with colleagues
at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the World Wildlife
Fund. ''But I didn't predict it would be this bad. The maps just floored
me.''

The study, undertaken to assist in the Mexican government's review of the
monarch's wintering areas, has not yet been submitted for publication but
has been given to the government. In response in part to the findings,
the Mexican government unveiled a proposal last Thursday for the creation
of an expanded preserve -- already ardently contested by some local residents
-- that would be more than three times the size of the current protected
areas.

Dr. Karen Oberhauser, a monarch ecologist at the University of Minnesota
who was not involved in the study, praised the quality of the work, saying:
''It's the first study and a really important study. We didn't expect the
change to be this great.''

Across the country now, monarchs are just beginning their fall migration,
an annual trek that takes the butterflies from across the central and eastern
United States and Canada down to the mountains of central Mexico. There
they roost as they have for millenniums, clustered in wintering areas sprinkled
throughout what were once dense, remote mountain forests. They remain there
until spring, when they fly north once again to breed. In each area, the
butterflies gather in huge roosting groups that thickly paper the fir trees
in the orange and black of their wings.

In order to study changes to the forests since the roosts were discovered
25 years ago, the researchers examined a series of aerial photographs taken
in the 1970's, 1983 and 1999 of a 100,000-acre area that includes three
of the most important wintering sites, each of which was designated as
a preserve in 1986.

What researchers found was that not only was forest disappearing both inside
and outside the preserves, but it was being removed in such a way that
what forest remained was highly fragmented. Much of the forest had been
significantly thinned, a process leading not to regeneration but instead
to further degradation. Over the 28-year period of the study, the average
size of the conserved patches of forest decreased nearly 90 percent, from
5,000 acres to 500.

''It's not as if we're talking about the clearcuts of the Western states
in the U.S.,'' said Dr. Guillermo Castilleja, an author of the study who
is the World Wildlife Fund representative in Mexico. ''Here people go in
and selectively log. They take certain trees. They take saplings for fence
posts or beams in their homes. Then as forests become more degraded they
are used for grazing by sheep or cows.''

As a result, even in remaining forest stands, trees are more exposed to
wind, drying, greater temperature extremes and are more at risk of fire,
all of which make the forests less suitable as resting grounds for the
butterflies.

Despite the degradation, rough estimates of the area occupied by monarchs
in the wintering grounds do not show any significant decreases in the butterflies
so far, though anecdotal evidence suggests that monarchs have begun to
feel the effects.

For example, Dr. Brower said that in one region where there has always
been a large monarch colony, development has encroached to the point that
the once remote roosts of monarchs are now dangling in trees right next
to farm fields. This winter, the butterflies startled biologists by abandoning
the site, moving over the mountains to a more intact forest area -- an
increasingly rare commodity -- that they had never used before.

Scientists on the study collaborated with Mexico's Ministry of the Environment,
Natural Resources and Fisheries in the design of the new reserve, which,
they say, takes the biological needs of the monarch into much better account
than previous reserves. Previous protected areas were 40,000 acres in total
and dispersed over five sites. The proposed new reserve spans 140,000 contiguous
acres, more adequately covers known wintering sites and is intended to
protect not only the individual roosting areas but the watersheds of which
the forests are an integral part.

But it remains to be seen whether the expanded preserve will suit the needs
of local people well enough to prevent the illegal logging that has devastated
current reserves.

Part of the problem, reserve proponents say, is that in 1986, when the
Mexican government set aside the first sanctuaries, land was appropriated
without compensation for the residents, who owned the land communally.
As a result, researchers say, many residents are angry and have shown a
blatant disregard for the prohibition of logging inside the sanctuaries.

In the hopes of curbing illegal logging in the new sanctuary, Mario Huacuja,
director of communications for the ministry, said in a telephone interview
last week that in collaboration with private foundations, the ministry
was negotiating a novel system to pay local people for their lost logging
rights in the preserve. In addition, there will be payments to people who
help protect or restore the forest.

Dr. Castilleja said payments, which are to be administered by the World
Wildlife Fund and another private conservation group, the Mexican Fund
for the Conservation of Nature, will come from $5 million that is to be
provided by an anonymous source once final action is taken to create the
new preserve.

Despite the monetary incentives, there is already opposition to an expanded
preserve. Some have argued, for example, that the money being offered for
logging rights, about $16 per cubic meter of wood, is below the market
value and that residents will lose money. Last Thursday, when the new sanctuary
was announced, several hundred angry residents staged a protest at the
ministry, the local press reported. The ministry is accepting public comments
on the new preserve until Sept. 28.

Others note that whatever the monetary incentives, it will always be difficult
to prevent illegal cutting in an area as desperately impoverished as that
around the wintering grounds.

Dr. Dennis Frey, behavioral ecologist studying monarchs at California Polytechnic
State University, said that on a recent visit to a monarch sanctuary with
a group of scientists, the sound of their approach silenced the work of
a nearby, but hidden, woodsman.

''For the next two hours, as we headed up toward the butterflies, there
was no cutting,'' he said. ''But as soon we got back into our vehicles
to go, the chop, chop, chop started up again immediately.''
 Captioned as:  A monarch butterfly feeding at the Bronx Zoo. Most winter
in a forest area in Mexico. (Associated Press)(pg. F1)
 Captioned as: Chart/Map: ''Butterflies' Winter Haven Shrinks''
 Captioned as: Map shows change in the forest canopy in and around major
monarch butterfly wintering areas in Mexico near Mexico city. Maps compare
the area in 1971 to 1999.
 Captioned as: (Source: Dr. Lincolm P. Brower, Sweet Briar College)(pg.
F4)