Mexican monarch butterfly numbers at record low, scientists say

 

This year's 59% drop in the wintering population in central Mexico marks the sixth decline in the past seven years ~


The colonies of migrating monarch butterflies that spend the winter in a patch of fir forest in central Mexico were dramatically smaller this season than they have been since monitoring began 20 years ago, according to the annual census of the insects released this week.

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The use of herbicides destroying milkweed is directly linked to the mass cultivation in the great plain states of the US of genetically modified soybean and corn crops with inbuilt resistance to chemicals that the rest of the plants in the areas sprayed do not have. The WWF also noted usually hot and dry weather that can kill the butterfly eggs.

"It is a whitewash by the World Wildlife Fund and the Mexican government," the leading monarch expert Lincoln Brower of Sweet Briar College in Virginia said. "They are playing down and ignoring the continued degradation of the microclimate of the forest that is critical to the butterflies."