Monarch Population Status
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 at 3:26 pm by Jim LovettFiled under Mexico, Monarch Population Status | 2 Comments »
In the last update of the eastern monarch population (late September) we noted that it would be interesting to see how monarchs cope with the lack of nectar and water in Texas. We knew that the migration would make it through Texas (and Northern Mexico) but we didn’t know what impact the drought conditions would have on it.
Modest numbers of monarchs have already arrived at the overwintering sites in Mexico and they will continue to arrive through the end of the month. Preliminary reports indicate that the monarchs are spread out over an area of four hectares or so at this time but we expect this area to shrink in the coming weeks as the masses of monarchs become more consolidated.
Our predictions regarding the size of the overwintering monarch population still stand (visit the link above for details); official measurements will be done in late December and we will report the findings in an update after the first of the year.
Stay tuned!
2 Responses to “Monarch Population Status”
By Erin Riggs on Jan 9, 2012
Just curious about the update and anxious to see what the latest findings are. I was quite alarmed to hear how low the numbers were projected to be.
By Carol on Feb 3, 2012
I live in the north Houston area … and had and still have caterpillars. Butterflies emerging this week from their multitude of cocoons in my yard and on the house. WHY are they still hanging around? Some of the butterflies dont make it a day or two …. others fly off in a day. Of course I had tons and tons of butterfly weed plants in my gardens.
We must have had 30-40 cocoons and caterpillars that I counted just in the front yard.