Rain cold and high winds destroy
133 acres of trees west of Mexico City
March storms killed 7% of
monarchs and added to habit loss by tree-felling
Associated Press in Mexico City
Tuesday 23 August
201621.51 BSTLast modified on Tuesday 23 August 201622.11 BST
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% of the monarchs, according to conservationists.
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 6.2m butterflies, almost 7.4% of the estimated 84m
butterflies that wintered in Mexico, said Alejandro Del
“Never had we observed such a
combination of high winds, rain and freezing temperatures,” monarch expert
Lincoln Brower said of the storms, which struck on 8-9 March.
Two big storm losses within five
years may suggest changes in the climatic conditions that have allowed the
survival of patches of mountaintop forests. An additional 16 acres (6.5 hectares)
of trees were lost to drought this year.
“This points up just how fragile
these forests are, and how fragile the monarchs are, and it makes clear the
importance of reforestation efforts,” said Omar Vidal, director of the
conservation group WWF Mexico, which carried out the forest survey along with
experts from Mexico’s National Autonomous University and the government.
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