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Monarch Butterflies threatened
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 By Morgan Lee, Associated Press MEXICO CITY � A recent crackdown on illegal logging has not slowed deforestation threatening the winter refuge for monarch butterflies, according to a scientist who has been studying the insects for 50 years. In an effort to protect hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies that migrate to Mexico from the eastern United States and Canada each fall, police and environmental prosecutors in November closed down illegal sawmills, arrested 28 people, and confiscated illegally harvested lumber in central Mexico. "In my opinion the Mexican law enforcement effort to protect these butterflies is not effective," said Lincoln Brower, an ecologist who may be the foremost expert on the 3,000-mile (4,800-kilometer) monarch migration to Mexico. Mexico's Environment Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Brower said when he flew over legally protected butterfly areas this month, he saw working logging trucks, suggesting that illegal timbering continues to encroach on highland fir forests that are essential to the monarchs' survival. "You can go up in a 20-minute flight and see what's going on," he said. "It's obvious that there is massive deforestation on a grand scale. It is obvious from talking with local people that they are scared and angry because these (loggers) are analogous to the mafia in the way they treat the law and the land." Environment Department representatives and officials from cities located within the monarch habitat area also have participated in observation flights this month sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. Designed to provide a bird's-eye view of the effects of logging and erosion, the flights were provided last year to Mexican communal landowners, said WWF spokesman Jordi Honey-Roses. The monarch butterflies return each year to carpet fir trees in Michoacan and neighboring Mexico state, an aesthetic and scientific wonder that attracts about 200,000 visitors annually. The butterflies represent a seasonal economic boon to the landowners, known as ejiditarios, who manage four main butterfly sanctuaries in the 56,000-hectare (138,380-acre) Monarch Butterfly Biosphere. Criminal penalties were attached to laws against illegal logging in 2001, allowing for sentences of between three years and five years in prison, according to federal prosecutors. But the demand for wood continues to fuel illegal logging in forests across the country. During a four-month stay in Mexico, monarch butterflies remain susceptible to the wet and cold. Even small holes in a forest canopy can expose butterfly colonies, each containing millions of insects, to the fatal chill of a clear winter night, Brower said. "If the canopy is closed, it's like a blanket," Brower said. "It's really important that the forest be intact all the way down the valley.... It's a very limited system that the monarchs are capable of living in, as far as anybody knows." Since the 1970s, Brower, a professor at Sweet Briar College in Virginia and at the University of Florida, has been traveling to Mexico to conduct field tests related to seasonal monarch colonies, helping to unravel the scientific secrets of how monarchs absorb poison while feeding on milkweed to later discourage predatory birds. The 72-year-old scientist increasingly has focused on deforestation and the threat it poses to the monarch butterfly. On this year's trip, Brower was accompanied by two graduate students with aerial mapping expertise. The team was assisting with a forest mapping project in cooperation with Mexico's National Autonomous University and the World Wildlife Fund. Brower's team did find that a healthy number of monarch butterflies reached Mexico this year, although a rain storm and cold snap in January left a 4-inch (10 centimeter) layer of dead butterflies in one location. But Brower said the rate of deforestation is more rapid than ever and the logging appears to be more brazen. "You can't tell me that you can have (logging) operations of that magnitude without people knowing what's going on," Brower said. He called recent police raids on lumber yards a "show" and called for a sustained law enforcement presence. "They do care," Brower said of Mexican environmental authorities. "But it's got to be a consistent presence of an incorruptible police force." CONTENT COPYRIGHT BBC News and The Associated Press. THIS CONTENT IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. |
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