New conservation strategy to protect monarch butterfly winter
habitat in Mexico
Copyright 2001 WWF International
December 21, 2001
For the past two decades, the unique high-altitude pine-oyamel fir forest ecosystem of the States of Mexico and Michoacan, which provides critical winter habitat for millions of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) that migrate 4,000 kms from Canada and the U.S. have been deforested and severely fragmented.
Studies by the Geography Institute of Mexican National University-UNAM sponsored by the WWF Mexico Program Office show that between 1984 and 1999, 44% of high quality forest inside the reserve has been degraded due to continued and uncontrolled access to forest resources. Legal and illegal logging, changes in land use and forest fires are among the main causes of forest thinning which affects not only the forest ecosystem and watersheds but the survival of the monarchs.
At the end of November, President Vicente Fox Quesada officially announced the creation of the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Trust Fund. It was in collaboration with the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (FMCN), that WWF helped the Mexican government design this innovative conservation strategy that has included the establishment of a six million dollar trust fund which will provide the necessary financial resources to support long-term conservation activities by the local communities within the core zone.
It is the first time in Mexico’s history that a conservation trust fund has been created specifically to offer incentives to local communities who will receive payments to perform conservation and sustainable use activities instead of logging.
Economic incentives for local landowners need to be implemented to achieve successful conservation of the new reserve’s forest ecosystem. “Linking an economic incentive system to the declaration of a protected area is an innovative concept in Mexico. Historically, land use limitations imposed by protected areas have given few options to land owners, unintentionally generating illegal resource use and social conflicts,“ explained Juan E. Bezaury Creel, WWF Mexico Country Representative.
The Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund will provide economic incentives to gradually transform land use and the economy of the area from one based on unsustainable logging to one of conservation and sustainable forest management.
For further information please contact:
Mercedes Otegui, motegui@wwfnet.org
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