Protection Sought for Butterfly in Mexico
8/16/99
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Title: Protection sought for butterfly in Mexico
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 16, 1999
A leading environmental group today called on the Mexican army to
defend the winter refuge of monarch butterflies against illegal
loggers.
Homero Aridjis, president of the Group of 100 environmental
organization, said heavily armed loggers were openly cutting down
trees inside the Monarch refuge in western Michoacan state.
"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.
Aridjis said residents reported 100 trucks per night loaded with
lumber traveled between the butterfly refuge and Mexico City.
The monarch butterflies have captured the attention of
environmentalists worldwide for their annual migration from Canada to
Mexico and back. Generations born on the way instinctively find their
way to habitats in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Aridjis, who is also a poet and novelist, said environmental
authorities had failed to prevent illegal logging after an audit
published in April showed that communities had felled twice the
permitted number of trees.
Aridjis called a fine for illegal logging equivalent to about $70 was
"laughable."
Officials at the Environment Ministry did not return phone calls.
Copyright 1999, Reuters, All Rights Reserved