Tulsa World: Mexico City: Trees cut down in an effort to save butterfly preserve

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Mexico City: Trees cut down in an effort to save butterfly preserve

Rosendo Caro, director of Mexico's monarch butterfly reserve, stands in front of a group of trees severely damaged by the bark beetle outside the reserve near Ocampo, Mexico, on Friday. Gregory Bull / Associated Press

By Associated Press
Published: 10/20/2009 2:25 AM
Last Modified: 10/20/2009 4:57 AM

Authorities who have struggled to stop illegal logging in Mexico's famed monarch butterfly reserve now are cutting down thousands of trees 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 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 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, said 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."

So Mexican officials face the time-consuming task of cutting down each infested tree, removing the bark, burying it under soil, and then taking away the wood to prevent the beetles from spreading. By Associated Press

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	Report Comment 2ndjoyce, BA (10/20/2009 9:57:36 AM) Wow! The lengths we will go to save the butterfly. If only we felt the same about each other.
	Report Comment C.R. Delough, We need a new direction: markfortulsa dot com :-) (10/20/2009 11:29:55 AM) There was a park across from the now OHP office on I-44 that was FULL of Monarchs one season...they were EVERYWHERE. I was there one day when I was biking up to Oertle's one day...

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