North American monarch butterfly migration falls to record lows, report says

MEXICO CITY — One of North America's most dazzling natural phenomena, the annual winter migration to central Mexico by millions of monarch butterflies from the northern United States and Canada, has shrunk to record lows and is in danger of ending, environmentalists from across the continent said Wednesday.


In the 20 years since environmentalists began keeping detailed records of the monarch's winter habitats, the butterflies have covered as much as 45 acres of forest in the Mexican state of Michoacan. As of December, they blanketed just 1.6 acres of forest, the smallest area yet.

"I am deeply saddened by the terrible news," Karen Oberhauser, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies the monarchs, said by phone at a news conference here marking the release of a report by the World Wildlife Fund, Mexico's Environment Department and the National Commission for Protected Areas. "To preserve the monarch migration, we need a groundswell of conservation."


"I think it's past time for Canada and the United States to enact measures to protect the breeding range of the monarchs, or I fear the spiral of decline will continue," said Phil Schappert, a monarch expert in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Pacific Grove's monarchs

In Pacific Grove, where monarchs spend the winter, the news may not be so dire, though it is far from good.

As of Jan. 8, 11,000 monarchs were wintering in Pacific Grove, according to the city's Museum of Natural History. Visitors can still see flights of butterflies weaving through the clustered eucalyptus trees at the museum's Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary.

The museum has not updated its official count because the recent warm temperatures provoke the monarch to stay aloft, making them difficult to count. But the numbers may have improved slightly.

"I think they said there have been about 13,000," said Alex Kuchmasov at the front desk of the Butterfly Grove Inn, referring to conversations he has had with sanctuary workers. Monarchs frequently flutter into the inn's airspace because it sits next to the sanctuary. "Last year, there weren't very many — we didn't even hit 10,000."

Still, this is nowhere near the 25,000 butterflies he has grown accustomed to seeing.

"This year it's increasing, but it's still not like it was three years ago," he said. "It's all about the weather."

The butterflies' numbers have been down before. In the drought years of the 1930s, monarch populations "were probably as low as or lower than they are right now, and they recovered," Oberhauser said, attributing the rebound in part to the butterflies' remarkable fertility. One female monarch can lay between 500 and 1,000 eggs in her lifetime.

But, she said, "the problem is that now a lot of the habitat that they had in the past is gone, due to increasing use of this land for agriculture."

Next month, President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the Mexican city of Toluca, not far from the monarch preserve, to meet with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts. Omar Vidal, the director of the World Wildlife Fund's Mexico office, said he wants North American leaders to agree on a plan to protect the monarch, saying the migration "symbolically unites our three countries."

"The butterfly as a species isn't in danger of extinction," Vidal said. "What is in danger of disappearing ... is the migration of the monarch from Canada through the United States to Mexico."

Herald correspondent Matt Davenport contributed to this story.

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