Saving the Monarch Butterflies' Migration

(CBS)  Every spring, blue skies in Michoacán, Mexico, turn orange. For centuries, millions of monarchs have gathered in these same ancient forests, traveling from as far away as Maine, North Dakota, and even Canada. They weigh just a fifth of a penny, but so many flapping wings can sound like falling rain.

"You've been out here countless times. Does it still have an impact?" CBS News correspondent Seth Doane asked Bill Toone, the founder of the Ecolife Foundation.

"Absolutely, I stood in this forest the other day filming and I started to cry - and that's after 23 years," Toone said.

For Toone, a veteran conservationist, this site is both awesome and troubling.

There are an estimated 250 million monarchs that winter in this preserve. That sounds like a lot - and it certainly looks like a lot, but imagine 15 years ago when there were nearly one billion. The problem is giant fir trees where monarchs huddle for warmth are being cut down.

Without cover, millions of butterflies often freeze to death - in an average year, up to 15 percent. But this year, bad weather killed more than 50 percent.

Right now, we're inside a protected area of about 140,000 acres that the Mexican government set aside as a preserve for the monarch butterflies. Still, inside this zone, every year, more than 100,000 trees are cut down.

Mexico recently lost nearly 7 percent of its forests, an area twice the size of New Jersey, much of it from illegal logging. Deforestation threatens more than butterflies, as it destroys watersheds which can cause mudslides. One five miles from a butterfly sanctuary killed 17 people.

But even average families contribute to the problem, consuming about 40 trees a year to cook and heat their homes.

Son Toone's group Ecolife now builds and donates fuel-efficient stoves here in the Mexican state of Michoacán, reducing a family's wood consumption up to 75 percent, to just 14 trees a year.

Toone said the secretary of the environment in Mexico would love to see 600,000 of these stoves in Michoacán, and they've built 500 so far.

"Our work is cut out for us," Toone said.

Ecolife is also pledging to plant a million new trees over the next three years.

Now, the monarchs are leaving these forests, mating along the way. Over summer, four generations will be born and die, each living about a month before a "super generation" arrives. They'll live seven months, and having never been to Mexico, will somehow find their way, back to these same ancient forests.

Dr. Lincoln Brower, the world's leading monarch expert said this magnificent migration is definitely worth saving.

"How would the world be different without the migration of the monarch butterfly?" Doane asked.

"My answer to that is - what good is the Mona Lisa? What good is Mozart's music? We could live without it, but we would be diminished as a culture and as a people," Brower said. "There is nothing like it. It is unique."

But saving the migration means saving the forest. The question is: How much time do these monarchs really have?

[gmahoho]

One of the things that should have been mentioned on this program was how we, as ordinary people, can help protect this beautful insect and its migratory mystery for future generations. I have been nurturing, raising, and releasing monarch butterflies for the past decade and have seen an incredible decline in the milkweed plant over the years. Monarchs are specific to this plant and rely on it to lay their eggs. The larva, in turn, feasts soley on this plant until it becomes a chrysalis. Monarchs depend on this plant to ensure the survival of the "next generation". Chemicals on winter roadways destroy the plants growing alongside the road, farmers eradicate them as they plant and harvest crops, and people, in general, deem them a "weed", and a hardy and invasive one at that, as their root systems spread quite easily once they are established. However, without the milkweed plant, we lose our chance to witness the beauty and wonder that this migratory insect brings us each spring and fall. Without the milkweed plant in YOUR area the monarch butterfly may survive, but your children, and your children's children may never set eyes on the spectacular metamorphose of this amazing insect.

[MonarchScandal]

The American scientists failed to tell the CBS news reporters that Monarch butterflies are actually weedy opportunist insects that thrive in disturbed habitats.

Examples: Road cuts through the Mexican forests actually create drinking water habitats for the butterflies:http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/elronectd.jpg
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/elrosneca.jpg
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/4ALC/louiseb.jpg

So do small clear cuts:
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/chincuawater1.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/mastertech/elmead.jpg

Cuts or thinning of the forests also creates flower nectar habitat for the butterflies:
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/elrosnecb.jpg

The CBS story also failed to provide photographic proof of the claim that the monarch cluster areas in Mexico are rapidly disappearing do to illegal logging. The underlying reason is because the historical photos actually show the cluster areas are NOT rapidly disappearing:
El Rosario Sanctuary in 1990 vs. 2005
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/mastertech/9005.jpg Nearly all the sanctuary property owners are being paid by the Mexican government and foundations not to harvest the forest, hence the forests are protected. Only 1 of the 12 butterfly cluster areas was lost due to logging and that happened because
the property owner didn't want to participate in the "pay not to log plan."

[dnamj]

Logging is happening in every country that has trees. Mexico is no more ignorant than anywhere else. The truth is that people are huge consumers, and there are too damn many of us.

[dnamj]

Logging is happening in every country that has trees. Mexico is no more ignorant than anywhere else. The truth is that people are huge consumers, and there are too damn many of us.

[trillion1]

Pity they have to go to such an ignorant country.