President Fox announces program to protect habitat of migrating monarch butterflies
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
November 28, 2001
By LISA J. ADAMS
MEXICO CITY - Calling the monarch butterfly "the heritage of humanity," President Vicente Fox announced a program Wednesday to protect the forests that serve as winter havens to hundreds of millions of butterflies that migrate from Canada and the United States.
Through the Monarch Trust, a $6.1 million fund created by the government and several private foundations, the government will pay local residents to stop cutting trees and preserve and grow additional forests.
"With this program, there will no longer be any justification for cutting down one single tree that serves as a refuge for the butterflies," Fox said in announcing the program - one of several actions being commemorated as part of Mexico's National Conservation Week. Each year, from 100 to 140 million of the orange-and-black monarch butterflies complete a journey of as many as 3,000 miles from the United States and Canada to five different sanctuaries nestled in the fir forests of the central states of Mexico and Michoacan. The butterflies leave again in February and March to return to the north in a process scientists still do not yet fully understand.
The national butterfly sanctuaries, which receive support from the United States and Canada, occupy about 138,376 acres, an area where about 523 residents live.
But in the past 28 years, more than 40 percent of the forests in the area have been lost to illegal logging operations and peasants cutting the trees for firewood.
Mexico has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, losing about 1.5 percent of its forests and jungles - 1.7 million acres - each year.
Fox created the National Forestry Commission in April to bring an end to the practices.
But much of the problem stems from necessity: In the past, poor peasants living on communal farms in the areas close to the butterfly sanctuaries had few alternative ways to make a living besides cutting down trees to sell to illegal loggers.
Under the new program, the monarch trust will pay 12,500 residents of communal farms located in the core butterfly habitat for their so-called "cutting rights" and to help preserve and expand the forest.