Monarch Update

Once again, Insects in the City is ahead of the curve.  Our early news last month about monarch butterflies is being confirmed in the newspapers this week.  Gardeners in urban areas are being encouraged to plant milkweed to provide some extra food sources to help migrating butterflies this summer and fall.

Monarch butterflies making trek north from Mexico in lowest numbers in decades
Fort Worth Star Telegram By BILL HANNA


Monarch butterflies, hit hard by strong storms at their winter home in Mexico, have dwindled to their lowest population levels in decades as they begin to return to Texas on their springtime flight back to the
United States and Canada.

The monarch loss is estimated at 50 to 60 percent and means that the breeding population flying northward is expected to be the smallest since the Mexican overwintering colonies were discovered in 1975, said
Chip Taylor, a professor of entomology and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.

Monarchs having a rough winter

It's not related to pest control, but for anyone interested in the science side of entomology, the plight of the monarch butterfly is making headlines in the insect science community.  Overwintering monarch butterflies are having a tough winter in the Sierra Chincua mountains, in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. Record torrential rains (which have been devastating for people in the region as well) along with cold temperatures have not been kind to monarchs this winter.

If you are not familiar, nearly all monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus, in eastern North America migrate each fall to the Sierra Chincua mountains to spend the winter in a site that has ideal overwintering conditions for butterfly survival. In one of the true migratory wonders of nature, each year these butterflies start a return trip north to recolonize areas with milkweed plants and build up their population numbers.

Monarch Watch is a non-profit group dedicated to Monarch Conservation. In the blog postings at Monarch Watch, observers have been following the weather in central Mexico closely. Reports so far are fragmentary but of concern to monarch watchers. According to a recent email sent by Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch, surviving monarchs may be down more than 90% following the storms. Researchers fear that it will take monarchs at least two, and perhaps more, years to recover from the effects of this year's winter weather.

Of course monarchs have survived bad weather for hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years.  What makes bad weather significant today is that monarch refuges are shrinking due to habitat loss caused by illegal forestry and development in the key butterfly preserves.  With the loss of each hectare of prime butterfly habitat the monarch's survival becomes a little more tenuous.

No one knows the monarch's ultimate fate, but by all accounts we will see far fewer monarchs on the wing this year.