Where are the monarch butterflies?

Where are the monarch butterflies? De la Tierra Source Steve Tapia is a retired wildlife biologist who worked 23 years with the U.S. Forest Service and four years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Posted: Monday, August 25, 2014 12:15 am This familiar butterfly is one of the most beautiful of living creatures in the opinion of Marian W. Marcher, author of “Monarch Butterfly,” a book I found in special collections section at the Taos Public Library. Every summer it is a real treat to happen upon one of these “flittering art masterpieces,” but you don’t see them very often anymore, if at all. So what is the story with monarchs? A couple of “big picture” reasons for this. First, New Mexico is still in a long-term drought. Yes, it seems that we regularly get a summer rainstorm, and that helps, but according to the National Weather Service, New Mexico is well below the 100-year average for moisture, and monarch butterflies are very moisture-dependent, more so than other critters! Secondly, and related to the first point, monarch butterflies are a “keystone” species meaning “as the monarchs goes, so goes the rest of the environment and its inhabitants.” Monarch butterfly populations are down more than 50 percent on a worldwide-scale. Two other ‘big picture’ items that don’t bode well for the monarch butterfly are: over-wintering habitat in oyamel fir forests in Mexico is being lost at an alarming rate due to unregulated firewood cutting; and genetically modified crop (GMO crops) production in the U.S. is now commonplace, particularly in the farm-belt (Midwest), all but eliminating milkweeds that compete with cash crops. Milkweed is the primary food source for the Monarch butterflies. What a tangled web we weave! The strikingly beautiful monarch butterfly is tougher than it looks though. This tiny flier undertakes an incredible 2,000-mile journey every winter in search of a few specific mountaintops of oyamel fir forests in Central Mexico. Amazingly, this epic migration to and from these oyamel fir forests spans the life of three or four generations of Monarch butterfly, meaning no single individual monarch ever makes the entire journey! Yet, somehow, the species as a whole instinctively knows where to find these isolated mountaintops year after year. Ain’t nature grand? On a positive note, a conservation organization called Monarch Watch has been formed to fight the decline in monarch populations. The “take home” message of this group is “conservation and restoration of milkweeds needs to become a national priority” according to Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch. © 2014 The Taos News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. more info