Printer-friendly format

Lay of the Land

Three Strikes, You're Hired | Ten Reasons to Oppose "Fast Track" | No Net Loss? No Comment | Spreading Their Wings | Costly Corn | Deadly Winter for Monarchs | It Pays to be Popular | Honor Thy Father | Sprawl | WWatch | Bold Strokes | Updates

Deadly winter for monarchs

A new plan to protect monarch butterfly habitat from logging couldn't save the regal insects from inclement weather. In January, a severe rainstorm and freezing temperatures killed as many as 250 million monarchs in the mountains of central Mexico, perhaps 80 percent of the U.S. and Canadian butterflies breeding there. (Based on this death toll, scientists are revising their previous population estimates of 100 million monarchs wintering in Mexico.) The World Wildlife Fund suspects that illegal deforestation may have played a role in the largest known monarch die-off: As the forest canopy thins, it retains less heat and provides less cover against the potentially deadly elements. (See "Lay of the Land," March/April 2002.)