A large number of trees were felled by the extraordinary winds during the storm in early March in Mexico. The question came up of what to do with the trees on the forest floor. The MBF Board of Directors wrote a letter to forest personnel requesting that logs should be salvaged from trees only in the Buffer Zone, and we recommended that there should be only selective removal under supervision in the Core Zone areas that host the monarch clusters. Our recommendation was to let these trees decompose naturally, enriching the ecosystem, and hopefully even spur natural seedling regeneration. From conversations with personnel in Mexico, we learned that most of the downed trees were in the more sensitive Core Zone. We had hoped that they would be in the less sensitive Buffer Zone. During our annual MBF meeting on April 16, 2016, we held a conference call 
with colleagues in Mexico who work in the area and are experts in the forest. We learned that a major concern raised by the local people who live in and near the forested Core Zone is that dead and fallen trees drying on the ground could fuel major forest fires. As a result the Mexican authorities decided to allow the removal of downed trees throughout the area. Photographic evidence indicates rapid and extensive tree removal and we are concerned about the negative impact of this extensive salvage logging operation on the oyamel-pine ecosystem.