Children are enjoying their summer vacation, but that didn‘t stop them from participating in our reforestation. This year rains were delayed and so did our reforestation that began in July when the soil was ready to plant trees. With 280 people from the local communities so far, we have planted 5,400 trees on 5 hectares. Approximately 200 children joined the adults and participated in the reforestation!
MBF Board members Dr. Karen Oberhauser, Dr. Alfonso Alonso, and Dr. Ernest Williams, were among the authors that wrote a wonderful tribute to Dr. Brower titled “Lincoln Brower, Champion for Monarchs” recently published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. The article describes Lincoln’s trajectory and how it led him to work for the conservation of the monarch butterflies, took him to Mexico and how he established collaborations and mentored others to become not only a champion for monarchs but for nature as well!
The Los Angles Times published the article “To save the monarch butterfly, Mexican scientists are moving a forest 1,000 feet up the mountain“. The article shares the lovely story of Francisco Ramirez Cruz, a campesino from ejido La Mesa and his involvement with Dr. Cuauhtémoc Saénz who is also interviewed discussing his assisted migration experiments. MBF is proud to support these experiments!
Titled “La pobreza que mata a la mariposa monarca”- “Poverty that Kills the Monarch Butterfly”, Newsweek’s article begins by briefly describing the history of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and the social and economic challenges that its creation prompted. However, it continues with an encouraging viewpoint on how local inhabitants have faced the challenges with support from civil organizations such as Alternare. Lucino Gutiérrez and Don Guadalupe Garduño, campesinos from the Francisco Serrato and the Carpinteros indigenous communities, respectively, describe how they are using agroecological techniques to develop productive projects in their communities. All of it aiming towards achieving comprehensive sustainable development as Guadalupe del Rio, Alternare’s president and Karen Vega, from her team discuss. MBF is proud to support Altenare in their projects and foster forest conservation along with the well-being of the people that share the Reserve with the monarchs!
Board member Isabel Ramírez and her students walked 4km through the overwintering sites in Sierra Chincua and El Rosario and shared two videos: one in Chincua and another one in El Rosario. The monarchs are spectacular!
Experts from the WWF Mexico-Telmex-Telcel partnership in collaboration with the Natural Protected Areas Commission (CONANP) and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (MBBR), have published a press release reporting a 114% increase of the surface covered by monarch butterfly colonies in the 2018-2019 overwintering period. They reported a total area of 6.05 hectares (14.95 acres) occupied by 14 butterfly colonies which compared to the 2.48 hectares (6.13 acres) reported last year is much higher. The graph above shows the population counts since 1994.
This is certainly encouraging news but it doesn’t mean our work is over. Insect populations fluctuate and monarch populations have been on a downward trend so we can’t let down our guard. MBF will continue working towards the conservation of the monarch butterfly’s migratory phenomenon and the protection of their breeding and overwintering habitats.