[Pollinator] Anger flutters over 'Butterfly Town USA'

Sun Aug 29 17:08:06 PDT 2010

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Anger flutters over 'Butterfly Town USA'

Pacific Grove residents demand the city make up 
for last year's pruning that reduced the 
eucalyptus branches in a monarch sanctuary. What 
if the butterflies don't return, they ask.

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-butterflies-20100829,0,5528008.story

August 29, 2010

Reporting from Pacific Grove, Calif.

In Pacific Grove, you don't rile butterflies or the people who love them.

Monarch butterflies are as much a part of Pacific 
Grove as movies are of Hollywood. The city of 
15,000 calls itself "Butterfly Town USA." A 
municipal ordinance imposes a fine of $1,000 for 
butterfly molestation. In a rite of passage known 
to all Pacific Grove parents, kindergarteners are 
decked out for the annual Butterfly Parade with 
black-and-orange wings  a tradition since 1939.

So last fall, when a city contractor did what 
many see as an overly zealous pruning job in the 
town's famous Monarch Grove Sanctuary, residents 
were angry. And when a butterfly census found 
only 793 migrating monarchs – down from more than 
17,800 at the same time the year before  
tourists stayed away. Business for the season plummeted by more than 25%

At a City Council meeting last week, Mayor 
Carmelita Garcia apologized for the city's 
mismanagement of the tree cutting, calling it "a 
horrible mistake." In the audience, people who 
had come to hear about emergency sanctuary repair 
wore toy butterfly antennae that bobbed up and down as the mayor spoke.

With the first monarchs due in about a month, 
volunteers have been scrambling for potted trees 
that can serve as makeshift butterfly shelter 
throughout the 2 1/2-acre sanctuary. "We're 
hoping and praying," said Moe Ammar, president of 
the Chamber of Commerce that serves the 
picturesque, sometimes fogbound town of Victorian homes.

"People who follow the monarchs come from all 
over the world," Ammar said. "When we get calls 
asking if the butterflies have arrived, we have to be honest."

Officials said the aim of the pruning was to get 
rid of old limbs that were ready to fall. But in 
retrospect, they admit they could have been more 
selective. "For whatever reason," said Deputy 
City Manager Jim Becklenberg, "we didn't consult with the habitat experts."

But the city also says it had good reasons for 
its safety concerns. Limbs from the area's many 
diseased pines fall from time to time. In 2004, a 
toppling branch killed an 85-year-old woman who 
was strolling with her grandchildren. The city, 
which had identified the tree as dangerous, paid 
$1 million to settle the family's lawsuit.

As anger over last fall's pruning job grew, the 
public works director was fired. City officials declined to say why.

A patch of woods near the windswept tip of the 
Monterey Peninsula, the city-owned refuge is 
empty now. Starting with small scouting parties 
in September, waves of monarchs fly in from their 
inland breeding grounds and generally stay into 
February. They traditionally cluster in great 
bunches, mostly on eucalyptus limbs, moving from 
spot to spot in the sanctuary depending on the sun and the wind.

But many of those limbs  some as high as 50 feet 
off the ground  were chopped, along with 
branches of Monterey pines that filtered the sun 
and buffered the wind. "They didn't trim the 
grove  they logged it," said one outraged local.

"It's remarkably sad," said Bob Pacelli, a 
Pacific Grove filmmaker who has documented the 
butterflies for about 20 years. "You start 
looking at one part of the destruction and follow 
it around, and just see more."

In desperation, Pacelli came up with a plan: Find 
boxed trees  preferably blue gum eucalyptus  
around 20 feet high and place them at strategic 
spots to help shelter the incoming monarchs. But 
the city has been slow to respond, Pacelli said. 
One official, Pacelli said, wrongly accused him 
of stepping on a butterfly, a violation of city code. No charges were filed.

Pacelli and a band of ardent volunteers recruited 
Monte Sanford, a Reno-based environmental scientist.

"It's almost unreal that the iconic butterfly 
town  one of the most famous places for 
butterflies in the world  did that to their resource," Sanford said.

Just how much the severe lopping discouraged the monarchs is an open question.

For reasons still unclear  climate change and 
development are possible culprits  the winter 
migration to the California coast has dropped 
dramatically since 1997, according to the Xerces 
Society, a conservation group that runs a 
Thanksgiving week census. Last year was bad 
statewide, with a decline of about 55%. Pacific 
Grove, like a couple of other Monterey County spots, saw a drop of about 90%.

Stuart Weiss, a conservation ecologist and 
consultant for the city, said many factors may 
have contributed to last year's decline. Three 
years of drought in the Central Valley may have 
withered the milkweed that breeding butterflies 
thrive on. Severe storms may also have played a part.

Weiss this week started mapping every tree in the 
grove, assessing different locations for 
moisture, sun and wind. Creating a long-range 
plan, he said he'll advise the city to plant 
another row of eucalyptus trees and develop a 
more thoughtful, less reactive management approach.

"You have to think decades in advance about 
replacement of critical trees," Weiss said. "I 
want to build some resiliency into the habitat so 
that eventually, the loss of a few branches won't deal it a fatal blow."

Meanwhile, donations for two dozen potted trees 
are rolling in  the mayor herself wrote a check 
 and, next week, the City Council is to consider the plan.

"Something's got to happen," Pacelli said. "If it 
doesn't, there will be a bunch of old ladies 
chaining themselves to the trees out there."

steve.chawkins at latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, <http://www.latimes.com/>Los Angeles Times

*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Chair
IUCN (International Union for Conservation of 
Nature) Butterfly Specialist Group
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit 
organization that protects wildlife through the 
conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.

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