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While wintering in Mexico, monarch butterflies occupied 53 percent less area this year than last year. The butterfly colonies covered 2.83 hectares of forest in Michoacán and the state of Mexico in the winter of 2019–2020 and 6.05 hectares in the winter of 2018–2019, the country’s National Commission for Protected Natural Areas announced last week (March 12).
“The current reduction in the population of [monarchs] is not alarming, but we must remain vigilant that it is not a trend in the coming years,” Jorge Rickards the general director of World Wildlife Fund Mexico, says in the announcement. He explains that in most winters the butterflies form colonies across roughly three hectares; last year’s expanded occupied area was “atypical” because the insects had better weather conditions to reproduce in the spring of 2018 compared with the spring of 2019.
Rickards also notes that the total number of monarchs ...
