[Pollinator] Canada, Mexico, U.S. Agree to Protect Butterflies

[Ladadams@aol.com]

ENN FULL STORY
Canada, Mexico, U.S. Agree to Protect Butterflies

July 06, 2006 — By Maggie Fox, Reuters 
WASHINGTON — Wildlife officials in Mexico, the United States and Canada have 
agreed to work together to protect the Monarch butterfly, which makes a 
spectacular migration every year from Canada to Mexico. 

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, 
Canada's Wildlife Service and Parks Agency and Mexico's Secretariat of the 
Environment and Natural Resources have designated 13 wildlife preserves as 
protected areas, the Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday. 

The "Trilateral Monarch Butterfly Sister Protected Area Network" will develop 
international projects to preserve and restore breeding, migration and winter 
habitat for the orange and black butterflies. 

Every autumn, millions of monarchs leave eastern Canada and the United States 
and fly distances of 2,800 miles and more to the oyamel fir forests of 
Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains for the winter. Monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains 
migrate south to eucalyptus groves in southern California. 

The informal agreement will include sharing information about ways to 
preserve the habitat and migratory pathways of the butterflies, said Donita Cotter, a 
spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

It will not require any legislation. 

"I think it's wonderful," Monarch researcher and ecologist Dr. Lincoln Brower 
of Sweet Briar College in Virginia said in a telephone interview. 

"I think it will make a good symbolic statement." 

But Brower said the agreement will do little to preserve the butterflies 
unless stronger action is also taken to stop logging in Mexico and to change 
farming practices in the United States that are destroying the plants the 
butterflies rely on. 

"We are going to lose the whole thing if they don't stop this silly illegal 
logging in Mexico," Brower said. 

Illegal loggers have been destroying the trees in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly 
Biosphere Reserve, while development is threatening the California eucalyptus 
groves. Brower said there is evidence that heavy use of weedkillers is wiping 
out the milkweed plant, which is the only thing that Monarch caterpillars will 
eat. 

This agreement brings attention to the threats, Brower said. "It is important 
that the countries keep up pressure on each other," he said. 

Source: Reuters 

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Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
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San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
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