Encouraging early Monarch Report from Mexico
Lili Pintea-Reed
pinteareed at madbbs.com
Tue Dec 3 06:36:42 EST 2002
Well I like to think that all the extra rearing and releases every hobby and
professional breeder did last year helped somehow. All the dingy girls who
wanted butterfly weddings. All the farmers who left little patches of
milkweed by the corn. All the petro guys who left milkweed around their rigs
in TX. All those school kids raising extra monarchs. And all the biology
professors who had interns raising extra monarchs in the back of the lab
(you soft hearted bug guys... caught ya...). Hows the math work for that??
Lil
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Yule <droberts03 at SNET.Net>
To: <monarch at saber.net>; TILS talk <TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com>
Cc: LEPS-L <LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 12:51 PM
Subject: Re: Encouraging early Monarch Report from Mexico
> Hi all.
> Regarding the post on Monarchs return to Mexico I would encourage
> everyone to go to the source of this post (i.e. a website called KENS 5)
and
> read the entire text. I did. I found amazing things.
> 1. Although an estimated 150-250,000,000 monarchs died there last year
> Rangers at El Rosario say there are four times as many butterflies there
> this year! Hmmm...by my calculations there must be more than a billion
> butterflies there. I've got to see this.
> 2. Rangers explained the unprecedented fecundity this way, "the monarchs
> compensated for last year's die off by overbreeding." I take this to mean
> that the twice/thrice/four times removed descendants of last year's dead
> monarchs kept the memory of their ancestors alive and used this as
> motivation to "get busy" (as young people say) and reproduce. (;>}!
> 3. Apparently there is an incredible 78 year old butterfly guide by the
name
> of Max Garcia who leads 250,000 monarch lovers a year up the mountain to
> view the wintering butterflies! I want to meet this man! I must be
> misreading this somehow. It must be very crowded in these remote
mountains
> during butterfly season.
> 4. Finally I'm relieved to find that all my foolish worry about
> deforestation and habitat destruction in the mountains of Michoacan has
been
> for naught because the Mexican government has passed protective laws which
> prohibit people from making "loud noises" because, as the KENS 5 website
> news story informs us,"about 80% of a Monarch's body is ears". Well that
> does it, either this finding is new to science or I'm returning my
> undergraduate University degree in Biology because they never taught me
that
> important fact in Invertebrate Zoology. I've got to spend more time at
this
> website, who knows what else I've missed? It's amazing the facts that
slip
> by when you're not paying attention... ;>{ Well back to the books.
>
> I would certainly be pleased to find that Monarchs
> have returned in force to wintering grounds and I have little doubt that
> they will. I have no reason to doubt reports that they have in fact
> returned. (There were just too many silly impressions and "facts" in the
> "news" article referred to, to resist poking a little good natured fun at.
> Maybe the original was written in Spanish and there were translation
> problems?). Monarchs are well adapted to many disturbances and the
> survival techniques that they exhibit are extraordinary and fascinating.
> That is not to say that logging, deforestation and habitat destruction are
> not relevant issues to long term survival of wintering Monarch population.
> Habitat destruction and sensitivity to temperature fluctuations caused by
> natural and human habitat modifications are still critical factors in the
> wintering grounds to stay aware of. THAT is my only point in this post.
>
> Bill Yule
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Cherubini" <monarch at saber.net>
> To: "TILS talk" <TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com>
> Cc: "LEPS-L" <LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu>
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 3:29 AM
> Subject: Encouraging early Monarch Report from Mexico
>
>
> > After a massive die-off last year, millions of monarch butterflies have
> returned to
> > Mexico by Jan Jarboe Russell 12-01-2002:
> > http://www.mysanantonio.com/keyword/search/index.cfm
> >
> > ROSARIO, Mexico < "Last year, this forest was a carpet of dead
> butterflies,"
> > said Maximiliano Garcia, a 78-year-old native of this mountain sanctuary
> that
> > is the winter nesting ground of monarch butterflies. "But this year,
it's
> like a
> > miracle, there are more monarchs than ever before."
> >
> > We are standing about 10,000 feet above sea level in the dense and rural
> Sierra
> > Madre Occidental mountains. The forest is eerily silent. Soon the
clusters
> of
> > monarch butterflies stir from their sleep on boughs of fir and pine
trees.
> > When the sun breaks through the trees, thousands of monarchs stir from
> their
> > sleep, and spiral upwards toward the light. In an instant, the sky is a
> swirling
> > orange cloud of butterflies.
> >
> > This year's annual arrival of monarch butterflies to Mexico's Michoacan
> state,
> > after a 2,485-mile journey from the cold of Southern Canada, does indeed
> > seem miraculous.
> >
> > Even on an ordinary year, the monarchs are a testimony to nature's
> instinct
> > for survival. But this year the butterflies have persevered against all
> odds.
> > According to forest rangers at El Rosario, one of the monarch's
> sanctuaries,
> > there are four times as many butterflies this year as last.
> >
> > That is remarkable, given the fact that last January an estimated 150
> million
> > to 250 million monarchs died in these forests due to an unusual
> combination
> > of freezing temperatures and heavy rains. It was the worst die-off in
> history.
> > Natives such as Garcia were horrified to see heavy clusters of frozen
> > butterflies hanging on trees and dead monarchs 13 to 15 inches deep
lying
> > on the ground. "I tried to be stoic," said Garcia. "But I am an old man
> and
> > I was very sad."
> >
> > Forest rangers at El Rosario believe that the monarchs compensated for
> > last year's die-off by over-breeding.
> >
> >
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