Updates From Mexico

Earlier I projected that there could be as many as 80-100 million monarchs at the overwintering sites this winter, up from the all-time low of 28.3 million of last winter. We won’t know how this estimate compares with the actual number of overwintering butterflies until mid-winter after Eligio Garcia completes his survey of the sizes of the overwintering colonies. For more information see “Mexicans predict banner year for monarchs” [dead link]

Here is another positive story: In a recent speech, Mexican President Vincente Fox devoted his attentions to the broad-based efforts to support preservation of the monarch overwintering sites. The text indicates a strong awareness of the issues and a concerted plan by the Mexican government to address monarch conservation. For a full text of this in Spanish please see

dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011128/wl/mexico_butterflies_1.html [dead link]

We will try to obtain an English translation of this text which we will post to Dplex-L and add to our website.