The number of monarch butterflies in Mexico this winter has dropped to its lowest point ever and is fuelling grave concerns that the monarch’s spectacular migration is disappearing, renowned monarch butterfly expert Lincoln Brower said Wednesday.
The area occupied by monarch butterflies at their overwintering sites in Mexico is down to 0.67 hectares according to information from the World Wildlife Fund.
That’s down from 1.19 ha. in the winter of 2012 – 2013, which was the previous low, and a dramatic drop from the peak in the last 20 years of 20.97 ha. in the winter of 1996-97.
“It’s pretty bad,” said Brower, who lives in Virginia and has studied monarch butterflies for 58 years.
Brower said it is the lowest number since the 1970s when much larger numbers of butterflies were found to be spending the winter in fir forests in Mexico. He started going to Mexico in 1977 and the colonies of monarch butterflies at that time were always huge. The decline has accelerated in the past decade.
“What we’re seeing here is no exaggeration,” he said. “If anything it’s an underestimate of the loss.”
More to come
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