Mexican Butterfly Reserve Being Logged
8/26/99
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Title: Mexican BUTTERFLY RESERVE Logged
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 26, 1999
MEXICO CITY, Mexico, August 26, 1999 (ENS) - Heavily armed loggers are
openly cutting down trees inside the Monarch butterfly refuge in
western Michoacan state, according to Homero Aridjis, president of the
Group of 100, an environmental organisation of artists and writers.
The strikingly colored black and orange Monarch butterflies migrate
annually between Canada and this reserve in Mexico.
"Given the incompetence of the country's environmental authorities,
the Group of 100 requests immediate intervention by the Mexican army
to end this devastation in the sanctuaries," Aridjis wrote in a
statement sent to the media.
Local residents near the butterfly reserve reported 100 trucks loaded
with lumber were moving towards Mexico City every night.
Aridjis said environmental officials have not stopped the illegal
logging even after an audit published in April showed that communities
had cut twice the permitted number of trees.