Tree loss in the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly in central Mexico is down by about 25 percent this year compared with last year as a sharp drop in illegal logging more than made up for an increase in tree deaths due to lack of water or disease, experts said on Monday.
Monarchs need healthy tree cover to protect them from rain or cold weather in the pine and fir mountaintop forests in Mexico where they spend the winter.
Millions of monarchs make the 5,500km migration from the US and Canada, and then return, each year, though no single butterfly lives to make the complete trip.
Environmentalists and officials in Mexico are expecting a strong turnout of monarchs this year, in part because of last year’s population rebound.
Mexico has clamped down on illegal logging, which has fallen to about one-third last year’s level.
Total tree loss from disease, drought, logging and other causes is down by an overall 25 percent from last year.
Jorge Rickards of the World Wildlife Fund said: “It is now small-scale logging, isolated trees ... we’re not seeing the big, clear-cut spaces we saw decade ago.”
However, one concern is that officials said the number of personnel guarding the reserve west of Mexico City has been cut from a high of about 180 to about 25 as part of a government austerity and reorganization program.
Environmentalist and poet Homero Aridjis, who grew up near the reserve, said locals are concerned about ongoing “salvage” logging of trees purportedly killed by bark beetles, disease or drought.
“Based on this justification they have extracted way too many trees from the reserve and there is no way to know for sure if the trees were really diseased or infested,” Aridjis wrote. “We have seen photos of trucks continuously passing through Angangueo [a town near the reserve] loaded with wood.”
Monarchs usually arrive in Mexico by the Nov. 1 Day of the Dead holiday, but have been delayed by late rains this year.
Gloria Tavera, who oversees the region for the Mexican Commission on Natural Protected areas, said: “We hope this year’s contingent will be as good as last year’s,” in part because of efforts to plant gardens containing nectar-bearing plants — which the monarchs need to store up energy — along their migratory routes.
Last year, monarchs covered about 6.05 hectares of pine and fir forests, up from 2.48 hectares in 2017.
Monarchs were sighted crossing the border into Mexico earlier this month and are now probably just a few hundred kilometers from the reserve,
However, because monarchs prefer to cluster in trees and wait until it stops raining, they will probably arrive about the end of the first week of next month, as they did last year.
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