As Numbers Dwindle, Mexico Hopes for Recovery of Monarch Butterflies Lissette Romero - Associated Press
go to original December 3, 2021

Monarch butterflies cling to branches in their winter nesting grounds in El Rosario Sanctuary, near Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

Communal farmers and butterfly guides are hoping for a rebound in the number of monarch butterflies - and tourists - at their wintering grounds in central Mexico after a bad year for both last year.

Experts say it is too early to calculate the number of monarchs, which migrate from the U.S. and Canada each year to forests west of Mexico’s capital. A formal survey will be carried out in December.

But the butterflies have come to represent an important source of income for the farmers who own much of the pine and fir forest where the monarchs clump together in trees. Already this year, some of the orange-and-black monarchs have settled into trees for the winter.

After a devastating drop in tourism because of the pandemic last year, and a 26% drop in the number of butterflies, farmer and tourist guide Silvestre de Jesús Cruz, 49, is pinning his hopes on a better year for both this year.

“Last year was a little harder, because there were a lot fewer people. But this year is going to be good,” De Jesús Cruz said. “A lot of the communal farm families depend on this,” said the 21-year veteran of guide work, “not just us guides, but also the people down there in the parking lot selling food. A lot of people.”

In the offseason — the butterflies arrive in November and leave around March — De Jesús Cruz plants corn and oats on his small farm parcel.

But those crops don’t provide much cash. Cash income comes from tourism, and because of the coronavirus pandemic, only about 40,000 people visited the dozen or so butterfly wintering grounds on isolated mountain tops last year, down from 80,000 in previous years.

Already, some tourists are showing up this year.

Due to a myriad of factors, monarch number dropped last year. Experts say drought, severe weather and loss of habitat — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use, and climate change, all pose threats to the species’ migration.

Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms also continues to plague the reserves.

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