With initial funding from MBF through its Monarch Butterfly Flight Challenge, a group of engineers and biologists from the University of Michigan is developing a remarkable system for determining the daily flight path of migrating monarchs. This group has made a tiny solar-powered sensor – so small that it is only one-tenth the weight of an adult monarch and equal to the weight of a flake of uncooked oatmeal – and when a sensor is attached to the back (dorsal thorax) of a butterfly, it records time, temperature, and light each day wherever the butterfly is located.  Thus, when a sensor-bearing monarch is in range of a detector at the end of the migration, the data from the monarch’s migratory path can be downloaded and its location determined for each day.

We are excited about what this system can tell us about monarch migration and its implications for improving our conservation efforts, and we are delighted that the Flight Challenge spurred development of this new technology.

The abstract of the group’s newest publication is accessible by clicking HERE.

Dr. Cuauhtémoc Saénz-Romero and Dr. Arnulfo Blanco-García, along with OKRAM media producers, made a video describing their assisted migration experiments. These experiments are exploring how planting oyamel fir trees at different elevations affect their growth and survival to prepare for future climatic changes that may occur and improve reforestation efforts in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. MBF is proud to be among the many organizations that are supporting this exciting and important research! To read more details about this research and watch another video go to our current projects/scientific research section by clicking  HERE.

 

 

 

With funding from MBF, Alternare, along with the local communities from the States of Mexico and Michoacán planted 22,515 trees on 21.52 hectares in 26 areas within the buffer zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve!  People from the indigenous communities of Crescencio Morales, Donaciano Ojeda, Manzanillos, Nicolas Romero, San Felipe los Alzati, and San Juan Zitácuaro participated as well as from the ejidos of El Capulín, Francisco Serrato, Crescencio Morales and Nicolás Romero. Congratulations on a job well done!

       

Supported by MBF funding, Alternare’s team is starting with the summer reforestation for 2021. Along with the indigenous communities of Crescencio Morales, Francisco Serrato and Nicolás Romero, they are planning to plant approximately 23,000 trees on 20 hectares! For the past two years, Alternare has been using trays to grow seedlings in the nurseries avoiding individual plastic bags for each tree. An ecologically friendly process that is true to the three R’s of the environment: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

         

Spring  is here and monarchs were last seen fluttering about Cerro Pelón. We are going to be spotting them up north pretty soon! Now it the time to plant milkweed and nectar-rich flowers to help them breed. Below some images of the monarchs while they were still in Mexico.

      

 

WWF-Telcel released the data on the yearly count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico for the 2020-2021 season and unfortunately the population has decreased to 2.10 hectares (5.2 acres). This is 26% from last year’s count. You can access the announcement on the WWF website by clicking HERE and read a translation in English HERE.