-Caveat Lector-
Subject:
Mexico loggers said to have deliberately wiped out 22 million
Monarch butterflies
Date:
Wed, 7 Mar 2001 20:19:38 -0600 (CST)
From:
"Mark Graffis" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization:
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To:
undisclosed-recipients:;
Wednesday, March 7, 2001
By Elizabeth Fullerton
To regain protected forest land, loggers may have deliberately wiped
out some 22 million Monarch butterflies which migrate annually from
Canada to Mexico for the winter, a top environmentalist said Tuesday.
Homero Aridjis, head of the environmental lobby Group of 100, told
Reuters loggers were believed to have sprayed pesticide on the orange
and black butterflies in order to regain some 216 square miles of
forest declared protected by the government.
"There has been a massive slaughter of the butterflies in two
sanctuaries," Aridjis said. "This will affect the reproduction process
completely. Now we don't know how many butterflies will come this
autumn."
Millions of monarch butterflies migrate some 3,000 miles annually to
flee the icy winter in Canada and the United States for the warmer fir
forests in Mexico's central Michoacan state, some 70 miles west of
Mexico City.
For five months of the year, Michoacan's trees are turned into a
flaming orange and the forest is carpeted with the delicate winged
creatures.
The migration has taken place for the past 10,000 years, Aridjis said.
The butterflies normally arrive in early November and return north to
lay eggs at the end of March.
In November last year, the government of former President Ernesto
Zedillo extended the land devoted to five sanctuaries.
The move was in response to a study showing that farming and illegal
logging had destroyed 44 percent of the original forest since 1971.
Without drastic action, the study predicted the original forest would
disappear in under 50 years.
"The new decree could have prompted this," Aridjis said. "If there are
no butterflies they can claim the trees without problem."
But government environmental watchdog Profepa said it had not heard of
the butterfly slaughter, according to inspector Joel Rodriguez.
"We haven't ever registered people using pesticides. But it's one of
the zones where they have the most illegal logging," he said. "It (the
butterfly deaths) could also be a result of the freezing this winter
which happens every four or five years."
The U.S.-based nonprofit group Packard Foundation donated more than $5
million to the Worldwide Fund for Nature to help the Mexican
government rent or buy logging rights from local residents to
compensate for lost income while developing alternative job sources.
Aridjis said the loggers had targeted two sanctuaries --Cerro San
Andres and Las Palomas - in the past two weeks.
"The wings of the butterflies found inert on the ground had a strange
luster and there was a smell of pesticide and petrol in the
sanctuaries," he said.
Copyright 2001, Reuters
Copyright 2001 Environmental News Network Inc.
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