Dr. Sears, Monarchs, Bt corn

Paul Cherubini cherubini at mindspring.com
Mon Oct 9 19:06:08 EDT 2000


Ron Gatrelle wrote:

> At $5. each that is a total of $50,000 !!!!!! OF COURSE there
> are not 10,000 tagged specimens there (or are there?). BUT the greedy,
> unreasonable, and unscrupulous don't know that. Sorry, I think it is a huge
> mistake to offer money for monarch tags. It is not worth the potential risk
> to the over-wintering populations.

Ron, $5 for a tag is small potatoes and alot of time and effort 
compared to the easy money that could be made just collecting the
overwintering monarchs to supply wedding releases. 
$10.00 per butterfly times the 100,000,000 monarchs in Mexico =
ONE BILLION DOLLARS!  And $10 per monarch times the
3,000,000 monarchs in California = 30 MILLION DOLLARS!

According to
the butterfly society leaders listed below, this
is already a big problem. They wrote:
(see http://www.naba.org/weddings.html):

"In addition, these releases create a commercial market for 
live butterflies (currently about $10/apiece), with the result that, 
for example, the Monarch overwintering sites in Mexico and on 
the California coast are now targets for poachers." 

Jeffrey Glassberg (president of NABA)
Paul Opler 
Robert M. Pyle
Robert Robbins 
James Tuttle (president, (Lepidopterists' Society)


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