[leps-talk] Re: Brower replies- The most recent ranting about monarch butterfly conservation

Thu Oct 9 17:52:47 EDT 2003

I agree entirely with Charlie...this whole thing is getting pretty
tiresome...and I was wondering the very same thing as he...what about the
Mexican Government?

Another thing that troubles me about Dr. Brower's post below is this: Why
such an emotional introduction to his statement? Was Mr. Cherubimi actually
"ranting"? It did not appear that way to me...Mr. Cherubimi (and do not
think that am picking sides here, because I'm not...habitat destruction is a
sad fact everywhere...not only in northern Mexico...it's a significant
problem right here in northeastern Massachusetts)is and has been presenting,
with his own documentation...counterpoints to Dr. Brower...whatever the
merits of these counterpoints...and unless I'm forgetting something, he also
accuses no one of "ranting"...

And, who exactly are the "anti-conservationists"? Here's a question: Can a
passionate Lepidopterist, professional or vocational (or in-between, as some
are on this list), an "anti-conservationist"? I think not...

I myself am not, of course, hoping that the Monarch disappears...I only wish
to know the truth...and decade after decade of what is more and more
appearing to be "the same old story" (that "the sky is falling"...) makes me
wonder and perhaps makes me even suspicious...

And that matter of the $100 million just doesn't help...

Again, Monarchs are all over the place here in New England...

And that storm and cold front was a natural act, an act of God, if you
will...not at all an issue of conservation...of course the monarch survived
it, the species has no doubt survivieed thousands of such storms...and
perhaps even benefitted from that storm...and there are too many rumors
making the rounds of "dead butterflies" coming to life when normal weather
conditins returned, also rumors (backed up by photos, unless these are
fraudulent) of certain folks trampling all over the piles of inanimate
butterflies, supposedly to get "evidence" of the "disaster"...

Alex 

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Bordelon
To: neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk; tils-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com
Cc: leps-l at lists.yale.edu; brower at sbc.edu
Sent: 10/9/03 4:47 PM
Subject: [leps-talk] Re: Brower replies- The most recent ranting about
monarch butterfly conservation

Are we to assume Monarchs are too stupid to find other sites?  All this
talk
and number-crunching is dung in the real world. What did house sparrows
do
before there were houses?  Barn swallows before barns?  Ratings,
ratings,
rantings...  So what?  You can't tell me such a successful insect
couldn't
adapt.  We'll destroy ourselves before every resource is depleted.  Go
to
the Mexican Government.  This whole Monarch business is not only moot,
it's
completely boring.  cb
----- Original Message -----
From: <neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk>
To: <tils-leps-talk at yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>; <brower at sbc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 1:49 PM
Subject: Brower replies- The most recent ranting about monarch butterfly
conservation

> Professor Brower asked me to pass on this message to these lists.
>
> Neil Jones
>
> From: Lincoln P. Brower brower at sbc.edu
> Subject: The most recent ranting about monarch butterfly conservation
> by Mr. Cherubini.
>
>
> To whom it may concern:
>
> To those who may seriously consider taking Mr. Paul Cherubini's
> October 2003 criticisms of L. P. Brower's recent (4 October 2003)
> lecture to the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History in California,
> I suggest perusing the following three scientific papers:
>
> 1) Brower, L.P., Kust, D.R., Rendon-Salinas, E., Serrano, E.G.,
> Kust, K.R., Miller, J., Fernandez del Rey, C., &amp; Pape, K. (In
> press  2003). Catastrophic winter storm mortality of monarch
> butterflies in Mexico during January 2002. In: The Monarch Butterfly:
> Biology and Conservation (Editors. K.M. Oberhauser  M.
> Solensky). Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
>
> 2) Brower, L.P., Castilleja, G., Peralta, A., Lopez-Garcia, J.,
> Bojorquez-Tapia, L., Diaz, S., Melgarejo, D.,  Missrie, M.
> (2002). Quantitative changes in forest quality in a principal
> overwintering area of the monarch butterfly in Mexico: 1971 to
> 1999. Conservation Biology, 16, 346-359.
>
> 3) Bojorquez, L.A., Brower, L.P., Castilleja, G.,
> Sánchez-Colón, S., Hernández, M., Calvert, W.H., Díaz, S.,
> Gómez-Priego, P., Alcantar, G., Melgarejo, E.D., Solares, M.J.,
> Gutiérrez, L., Juárez, M.d.L. (2003). Mapping expert
> knowledge: redesigning the monarch butterfly biosphere reserve.
> Conservation Biology, 17, 367 - 379.
>
> The first paper (still in press) documents the winter storm mortality
> of overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico that occurred in
> January 2002. One quarter of a billion monarchs were estimated
> to have been killed in two of several known colonies, all of which
> were impacted by a powerful and widespread storm and cold
> front. The second publication documents that the monarchs'
> overwintering forest within the 1986 presidentially decreed reserve
> has been degraded by 44% as well as heavily fragmented over a 28 year
> period, through January 1999. The third publication describes the
> process and rationale by which the new 2000 presidential decree
> increased the supposedly protected overwintering area from 62 to 217
> square miles. Research in progress with colleagues from the
> University of Mexico, NASA, Lynchburg College and Sweet Briar College
> indicates that extensive illegal logging is currently occurring
> within the supposedly protected areas. When these data are published,
> they will be available for public scrutiny.
>
> The exact number of years it will take for the current and increasing
> logging to irreversibly disrupt the migration of the monarch's
> eastern population is always an unknown. What we do know is
> that the forests within the tiny area of Mexico in which hundreds of
> millions of monarchs overwinter is being rapidly degraded.
> Denial of this is yet another example of the ostrich-like behavior of
> the more extreme members of the anti-conservation movement who choose
> to obfuscate hard scientific evidence in order to advance their
> political positions.
>
> Lincoln P. Brower
> Research Professor of Biology
> Sweet Briar College
>
>
>
>
>
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