“There are only a few monarchs remaining….Thousands can be seen streaming down the visitor staircase at the El Rosario Sanctuary,” Romero wrote.Ĭheck out live monarch butterfly sightings on the Journey North map. Correspondent Estela Romero reported in a weekly bulletin from the roosting sites on March 7 that about 75% of the monarchs had left the sanctuaries. The reduced population began its northward movement around March 7, according to Journey North, which tracks monarchs and other wildlife. The article blamed droughts in Texas and late arrivals at the overwintering sites as other factors contributing to the low numbers.Īnother monarch conservation organization, Monarch Joint Venture, responded to the WWF announcement by noting that “while the butterflies’ population fluctuates annually, the long-term decline continues to be of great concern and in need of conservation action.” “This was another sign that the overwintering numbers would be low since the number tagged is correlated with the size of the overwintering population,” read the post. Monarch Watch, a monarch butterfly conservation and citizen science organization at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, commented in a blog post that the number of butterflies tagged during the this year’s migration was the lowest in nine years. The announcement also noted that 145 acres of the butterflies’ overwintering forest have been degraded, a substantial increase when compared to the 47 acres lost in the previous year. The international conservation organization, which oversees the protected areas in Mexico where the monarchs roost each winter, cited habitat loss, herbicides and a changing climate as reasons for the decline. “This is part of a mostly downward trend over the past 25 years-when monarchs once covered more than 45 acres of forest,” said WWF-Mexico’s General Director Jorge Rickards in the March 21 press release. WWF officials reported earlier this week that the butterflies occupied only five and a half acres (2.21 hectares) of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Preserve this season compared to seven acres (2.84 hectares) last year. A reduced population of monarch butterflies has begun its 2023 spring migration with departures from Mexico just as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced that the iconic insects’ overwintering colonies declined 22% since last year.
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