Monarch Migration
Each fall the monarch butterfly travels thousands of miles to spend the winter in the forests on 12 mountaintops in central Mexico. The monarch migration is the most spectacular two-way migration carried out by an insect.
The forests provide unique microclimatic conditions that allow monarchs to survive the winter. Forest degradation is putting this amazing migration in peril.
The abundance of monarchs shows a discouraging downward trend over the past 20+ years. Click on the graph to enlarge and on this link to read how the numbers were obtained.
In the Spotlight
In 2019, MBF funded the update and publication of the “Monarch Cartographic Series: Vegetation and Land Cover 2018” and it is now online on UNAM’s Center for Research in Environmental Geography (CIGA)’s website. Developed by board member Isabel Ramírez, and her collaborators Jairo G. López-Sánchez and Sara Barrasa, this update is the second part of the Monarch Cartographic Series of which Volume 1 was published a decade ago and both are part of a long-term monitoring project of land cover in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (MBBR) and its surrounding areas. The monitoring will allow us to identify the magnitude and location of changes in land use.