Experts: Mexico storms led to deaths of millions of monarchs

Experts: Mexico storms led to deaths of millions of monarchs

Mark Stevenson, Associated Press

Updated 7:15 pm, Tuesday, August 23, 2016



MEXICO CITY (AP) — Storms earlier this year blew down more than a hundred acres of forests where migrating monarch butterflies spend the winter in central Mexico, killing more than 7 percent of the monarchs, experts reported Tuesday.

Rain, cold and high winds from the storms caused the loss of 133 acres (54 hectares) of pine and fir trees in the forests west of Mexico City, more than four times the amount lost to illegal logging this year. It was the biggest storm-related loss since the winter of 2009-10, when unusually heavy rainstorms and mudslides caused the destruction of 262 acres (106 hectares) of trees.

This year's storm also appears to have frozen or killed about 6.2 million butterflies, almost 7.4 percent of the estimated 84 million butterflies that wintered in Mexico, said Alejandro Del Mazo, the attorney general for environmental protection.

"Never had we observed such a combination of high winds, rain and freezing temperatures," monarch expert Lincoln Brower said of the storms, which struck March 8-9.

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Storms-damage-trees-in-Mexican-monarch-butterfly-9179423.php