Mexico cuts down trees to save monarch butterflies
By Mark Stevenson, The Christian Science Monitor, October 21, 2009 [here]
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities who have struggled to stop illegal logging in Mexico’s famed monarch butterfly reserve now are cutting down thousands of trees themselves to fight an unprecedented infestation of deadly bark beetles.
Biologists and park workers are racing to fell as many as 9,000 infected fir trees and bury or extract infested wood before the orange-and-black monarchs start arriving in late October to spend the winter bunched together on branches, carpeting the trees.
Environmentalists say the forest canopy of tall firs is essential to shelter the butterflies on their annual migration through Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The journey is tracked by scholars and schoolchildren across North America and draws tens of thousands of tourists to the reserve, a U.N. Heritage site.
But freezing rains and cold night air that can kill the monarchs at the high-altitude reserve, so the insects are threatened by a loss of trees, whether by loggers or the bark beetles.
Because the migration is an inherited trait — no butterfly lives to make the round-trip — it’s not clear whether they could find another wintering ground.
Experts say that an insecticide is the best way to control the beetles, but that would endanger the butterflies. Instead, park officials are fighting the plague tree by tree.
“It is obvious that in the medium and long term, if we do not act to adapt to the changes, then there could be a serious risk” to the butterflies’ migration, says reserve director Rosendo Caro, a forestry expert. “The forest is not going to disappear, but the conditions that make up the right environment for the wintering phenomenon could disappear.”
Beetles are devastating forests across the continent from Colorado to the Yukon, killing millions of acres of trees. In most places, the infestation is spurred by trees weakened by drought, and beetles that thrive in warmer weather. The dead trees increase the risk of forest fires, exacerbating the problem.
Bark beetles have long been present in the reserve monarch reserve, usually attacking a few trees in the driest months of early spring, before heavy seasonal rains that normally start in May.
But this year, little rain had fallen by July, and the trees were weakened. The beetles took advantage, burrowing in and robbing the trees of nutrients until they turned orange and die.
The infestation so far has affected 100 of the 33,482 acres in the reserve’s core mountaintop wintering grounds. … [more]
(Ed Note: 100/33482 = 0.3%, or 3 out of every 1,000 acres are infested. Hardly a catastrophe. No need to push the panic button. However, we strongly advise Reserve managers to institute restoration forestry to combat both the bark beetle and fire hazards, particularly the latter, because a severe fire could erase the entire reserve.)