monarch numbers

[Paul Cherubini]

Richard L.Brown wrote:

> The Bon Secour Peninsula in Alabama (west of Gulf Shores)
> is about20 miles long and has undergone rapid real estate 
> development in the last 25 years (since Hurricane Camille).  
> The same has occurred on the Florida coast. I
> suspect that the impacts of this recent and continuing habitat
> loss on monarch roosting and feeding areas on the Gulf Coast
> have not been fully realized.

Real estate developement changes the landscape, but virtually
always involves landscape plantings of flowering plants, shrubs
and trees that monarchs end up using as nectar sources
and as clustering sites. In other words, although real estate
development destroys existing habitat, it also creates 
(inadvertently) new monarch habitat. 

For example, a hot spot to see clustering monarchs in the fall
is at the town of Wamego, Kansas. Thousands of monarchs
gather in the tall shade trees that line Chestnut Street (within
a residential subdivision) and at the lawn covered city park.
Monarchs cluster right above the moving street traffic and in
people's home yards. 

Dr. Chip Taylor has also acknowledged this phenomenon. 
For example, last month he wrote the following on the 
dplex-list:  (capitals my emphasis)

"Wamego [Kansas] consistently gets large numbers of monarchs.
 My interpretation has always been that as the butterflies
move to the SW in this region it is the gallery forests along 
the river, THE NECTAR PLANTS IN THE CITY and along 
the river,  and the protection from the wind that concentrates 
the monarchs in Wamego."

Here in California, monarch overwintering sites are
commonplace within heavily urbanized areas of
the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin.
Are these healthy monarchs? Well apparently the two longest lived
female and male tagged monarchs ever recorded (Sept-mid May 
and Sept-early June) involved butterflies tagged at the San Leandro
Marina Golf Course overwintering site, just south of Oakland,
California.

Paul Cherubini, Placerville, Calif.