Follow up to last fall's "1000 miles of hell" monarch butterfly articles

Paul Cherubini monarch at saber.net
Wed Mar 21 20:14:51 EDT 2012


Last September and October there were numerous worrisome
articles in major newspapers across the USA about the migrating
monarchs facing "1000 miles of hell"  in drought stricken southern
Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and northern Mexico. Like this
Washington Post article http://tinyurl.com/3wmubf6

In these articles, this frightening graphic was often displayed
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/4ALC/wpostmap.jpg
And Dr. Chip Taylor of the Univ. of Kansas was often
quoted as saying: "They’re going to be encountering a
thousand miles of hell as they go through a nearly waterless,
flowerless, nectarless landscape."

Dr. Lincoln Brower also made these worrisome comments:
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/131426118.html
"By the time they get to Mexico, they're butterballs. They use
that fat to get them through the winter and back to Texas," said
Lincoln Brower, a professor of biology at Sweet Briar College
whohas been studying the monarchs for decades. But this year
may be different, he said: "We're really concerned about how
much energy the butterflies have to sustain them through the
course of the winter."

Mike Quinn also expressed his concern on an Austin, Texas
TV broadcast:
http://kut.org/2011/09/the-monarch-butterflies-are-back-but-struggling/
"they'll arrive in Mexico probably not at their optimal weight
or numbers." "the monarchs that are coming through now
[October] are the same individuals that will be coming through
in the spring so that's how critical their condition is even at this
point."

Then strangely after all that tension and concern there were no
follow up articles during the winter about whether or not the
overwintering monarchs in Mexico were actually dying in high
numbers due to low lipid reserves. Nor followup articles about
whether or not the size of the migratory population of monarchs
that returned to the USA in recent weeks was small and
dominated by feeble, emaciated butterflies as Taylor, Brower
and Quinn had suggested.

Well the size of the size of the monarch population that returned
to Texas and surrounding states this month has actually turned
out to be quite large. Here are the Journey North March 21, 2011
vs March 21, 2012 maps of the sightings that have been made to
date:
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/4ALC/JNcompare.jpg

As everyone can see, sightings in March 2012 not only greatly
outnumber those reported in 2011, but the presumed weak,
lipid starved butterflies have made further northward progress
as compared to last year on March 21.

Specifically, there have been about 145 sightings reported
on Journey North in Texas and surrounding States between
March 1-20 this year
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/Sightings_All.html
as compared to about 104 between March 1-21 last year
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/archives.html#S11
About a 40 % increase.

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.

 
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