Las Monarcas Butterflies on Thin Ice

[Mona Miller]

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/ ... ticle/544/
Las Monarcas
Butterflies on Thin Ice
BY ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE
Published in the Spring 2001 issue of Orion magazine

I ran across this article while searching for something else. It is a reminder of why we are all working hard to help Monarch butterflies.

[Paul Cherubini]

It is a reminder of why we are all working hard to help Monarch butterflies.

What serious threat to the monarch migration is identified in the article? The monarch is a weedy, opportunistic insect that, like it's milkweed host plant, thrives in disturbed and/or man made habitats. Both in the summer and winter. Like Golf Courses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwfnWscesIM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEhT3Q6b5yE
Roadsides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpQOx_tMEo0
Edges of GMO crop fields: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqrvAxTl0I

[Mona Miller]

The threats are listed in the article. People just need to read it.

[Paul Cherubini]

The threats are listed in the article. People just need to read it.

I don't see any listing of threats. I see only vague suggestions of threats without
supporting documentation; e.g. he says this with regard to the overwintering
forests in Mexico: "any factor that opens the protective forest canopy to the harsher
influences of wind, rain, snow, and cold by night, to intense sunshine, desiccation,
and overheating by day" but no mention is made about the fact that the butterflies
PREFER to position their colonies on the periphery of holes in the forest to begin with.
Like this: http://saber.net/monarch/pelonhole.jpg even when
there is an abundance of closed canopy forest available next to the hole. And he
doesn't mention that the one colony in Mexico with the highest density of trees (Piedra
Herrada) is, ironically, the same colony that suffered the most severe
mortality (90%) ever recorded from a storm and freeze (in 1992). So the whole
concept "forest canopy is a critically important blanket" is more hypothetical
than well documented.

Likewise Pyle says: "Butterfly profiteers rear monarchs for indiscriminate
release at weddings and other events, smearing our picture of their natural movements,
so critical for conservation," but he doesn't mention any specific cases where wedding
butterflies have smeared our understanding of monarch movements in a way that interfered
with or altered conservation efforts.

[Mona Miller]

Folks, read the article for yourself. It talks about the 2001-2002 winter in Mexico when over 200,000,000 were killed. Robert Michael Pyle's prose is incredible. I love his writing.

[Paul Cherubini]

Folks, read the article for yourself. It talks about the
2001-2002 winter in Mexico when over 200,000,000 were killed. Robert Michael
Pyle's prose is incredible.

The article makes no mention of the winter of 2001-2002. The article
was published in the Spring of 2001 - many months BEFORE the winter
of 2001-2002 had even occurred.