Deforestation, shrinking food sources, industrialization... Mexican Monarch Butterfly Folding Wing Beauty Farm

Source: Global Times

U.S. Vox website December 14 article, original title: Monarch butterflies are becoming victims of the butterfly effect in real life Last month, swarms of monarch butterflies flew over central Mexico into a protected mountain range. After flying into the local forest, they landed on six or seven Euryamer fir trees, bending their branches. The fir trees covered with tens of thousands of butterflies seem to have withered, and no trace of green can penetrate their dense black-orange wings.

Image source Visual China

Every fall, millions of butterflies fly from the eastern United States and Canada to Michoacan, Mexico, where they inhabit the warm climate until March. In November, I trekked into this King Butterfly Sanctuary with photographer Rojas and several representatives of the local El Rosario community. A large number of monarch butterflies danced around me, making me feel like I was in a Disney fairy tale.

As you gaze at hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies, it's hard to believe that the number of such charismatic creatures has diminished dramatically. And here's the reality: WWF data shows that the number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico has more than halved over the past decade compared to the previous decade.

Scientists initially suspected that the problem was illegal deforestation in the area. But they later found that this was more relevant to the changes taking place in the United States, thousands of miles away. In recent decades, industrial farms have destroyed meadows rich in milkweed, the only food source for monarch butterfly larvae. Shrinking U.S. food sources mean fewer butterflies in Mexico thousands of miles away.

This is the real-life butterfly effect, which makes protecting monarch butterflies even more challenging. For decades, the main way to protect animals was to set up protected areas, but this was not enough to protect these species that migrated complexly over long distances. Monarch butterflies are not doomed, but it takes a lot of creativity to save them. This will depend on solving the enduring mystery that haunts them: the migration routes of butterflies.

An epic trip to Mexico

Monarch butterflies are one of the longest migratory insects on Earth. Monarch butterflies that breed on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains are collectively known as eastern monarch butterflies. Every fall, large numbers of eastern monarch butterflies fly more than 2,000 miles south, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into a protected area about a 2-hour drive west of Mexico City. It will take them two or three months to complete this journey. It wasn't until the 1970s that scientists really understood where these beautiful flying insects went.

That afternoon, before I saw the monarch butterfly, I heard it first. The sound of thousands of butterflies flapping their wings together is like rain falling on dry leaves. Commercial logging and small-scale deforestation were once seen as a major threat to protected forest. But even if these problems were brought under control more than a decade ago, they still haven't stopped the decline in butterfly populations. Scientists looked beyond the reserve to find the crux of the problem: the native milkweed on which monarch butterfly larvae live is disappearing in the United States. For nearly a decade, industrial cultivation, which relies heavily on herbicides, has made it difficult for these green-stemmed plants to survive. Between 1999 and 2010, the density of milkweed in my home state of Iowa dropped by almost 60 percent. Climate change could be another threat. Auber Hauser, an expert on monarch butterflies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said weather plays an important role in the number of butterflies that eventually arrive in Mexico each year, and that climate change can disrupt the weather. The weather in monarch butterfly breeding grounds is getting hotter, making it more difficult for them to reproduce locally.

Butterflies meet the ink, and the soul returns

On the night of leaving the butterfly colony and returning to Mexico City, I ate at a roadside restaurant and talked to the family of female chefs who were busy in the kitchen. They say monarch butterflies sometimes inhabit nearby trees and that they are part of the local culture. These butterflies usually begin to arrive here around the time of the Dead day in Mexico to commemorate deceased loved ones. For many communities, they represent the souls of deceased loved ones.

The family of female chefs has yet to notice a decrease in the number of monarch butterflies arriving here each year, but a little girl named Erin Sophia said she was worried they wouldn't come here again. "If they don't come, my great-grandmother's soul won't come back," she told me.

Guzman, who helps manage the reserve, said the arrival of butterflies has also become a vital economic driver for the region. The reserve itself has become a large tourist attraction, and some of the wealth created from it is gradually benefiting the nearby community. For example, visitors can buy monarch butterfly napkins, monarch butterfly napkin holders and monarch butterfly earrings here. Researchers wrote in a 2013 paper that butterfly-related tourism provides an alternative source of income for many residents within the reserve, "and the living conditions of some residents have improved significantly." ”

But WWF's Hernandez said the decline in monarch butterflies had led to a decline in local tourism. He said that in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, as many as 200 tourist buses arrived in the reserve every day, but now the scene is no longer spectacular (the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought tourism to a standstill in the reserve).

Butterflies become victims of the butterfly effect

Not ironically, Guzman said, tourists from the United States and Canada often complain that there are not as many butterflies as in previous years. It was the United States that "broke their wings," he said. In his view, the protection of the monarch butterfly should become the common responsibility of the three countries of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Oberhauser said the U.S. needs to change its agriculture to coexist symbiotically with the native meadows where milkweeds are located. Farmers should use fewer herbicides, grow more diverse crops, and maintain more pristine habitats around their farms.

However, given that this is difficult to achieve overnight, scientists are exploring other approaches, such as setting up relatively loose protected areas within the migration range of monarch butterflies — like rest areas along highways that allow monarch butterflies to "recharge" during the long migration. But Andrei Green II, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the challenge was that scientists still couldn't determine the specific migration routes of the butterflies. Green II is working on another method: tracking the movements of monarch butterflies through the world's smallest microcomputer. This allows scientists to tailor conservation programs to the data they collect. The good news is that although monarch butterflies are picky about food, milk grass can thrive in a variety of environments.

Surrounded by butterflies, I lay comfortably on the ground of the reserve, feeling so far away from the forces that hurt them. However, Monarch Butterfly reminds us that the whole world is closely related, and we are just beginning to understand this. Iowa agriculture affects not only The Mexican ecosystem, but also the local culture. If you reach out to butterflies in one place, the benefits can be passed on to the other side of the continent. (By Benji Jones, translated by Wang Huicong)