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Jane Clark

Loggers Said to Wipe Out 22 Million Butterflies
Reuters   Mar 6 2001 9:56PM

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - To regain protected forest land, loggers may
have deliberately wiped out some 22 million Monarch butterflies which
migrate annually from Canada to Mexico for the winter, a top
environmentalist said on Tuesday. Homero Aridjis, head of the
environmental lobby Group of 100, told Reuters loggers were believed to
have sprayed pesticide on the orange and black butterflies in order to
regain some 216 square miles of forest declared protected by the
government.

"There has been a massive slaughter of the butterflies in two
sanctuaries," Aridjis said. "This will affect the reproduction
process completely. Now we don't know how many butterflies will come
this autumn."

Millions of monarch butterflies migrate some 3,000 miles annually to
flee the icy winter in Canada and the United States for the warmer
fir forests in Mexico's central Michoacan state, some 70 miles west
of Mexico City. For five months of the year, Michoacan's trees are
turned into a flaming orange and the forest is carpeted with the
delicate winged creatures. The migration has taken place for the past
10,000 years, Aridjis said. The butterflies normally arrive in early
November and return north to lay eggs at the end of March.

In November last year, the government of former President Ernesto
Zedillo extended the land devoted to five sanctuaries. The move was in
response to a study showing that farming and illegal logging had
destroyed 44 percent of the original forest since 1971. Without drastic
action, the study predicted the original forest would disappear in under
50 years.

"The new decree could have prompted this," Aridjis said. "If there
are no butterflies they can claim the trees without problem." But
government environmental watchdog Profepa said it had not heard
of the butterfly slaughter, according to inspector Joel Rodriguez.
"We haven't ever registered people using pesticides. But it's one of
the zones where they have the most illegal logging," he said. "It
(the butterfly deaths) could also be a result of the freezing this
winter which happens every four or five years."

The U.S.-based nonprofit group Packard Foundation donated more than
$5 million to the Worldwide Fund for Nature to help the Mexican
government rent or buy logging rights from local residents to
compensate for lost income while developing alternative job sources.
Aridjis said the loggers had targeted two sanctuaries -- Cerro San
Andres and Las Palomas -- in the past two weeks.

"The wings of the butterflies found inert on the ground had a strange
luster and there was a smell of pesticide and petrol in the
sanctuaries," he said.

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