Environmental Groups Ask UN to List Mexico Monarch Butterfly Reserve as in Danger Wochit News
go to original April 15, 2015

Activists from Mexico, the United States and Canada have filed a request to the U.N. World Heritage Committee to place the Monarch Butterfly Reserve wintering sites on the list of sites considered in danger. UNESCO designated the 139,000-acre reserve in the mountains west of Mexico City a World Heritage site in 2008.

Monarchs from the U.S. and Canada migrate 3,400-miles each year to winter in the forest reserve. But the number of butterflies wintering in Mexico has dropped steeply in recent years, leading to worries the migration might end.

Writer and activist Homero Aridjis said that adding the Monarch site to the list is needed to spur governments into greater efforts to protect the butterflies' habitat. Much of the milkweed the butterflies depend on has been killed by herbicides.

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