Saturday 23 March 2013

Monarch butterfly numbers decline again


Drought conditions and historic wildfires lead to more decline
March 2013. Bad news again for the Monarch butterfly: Drought conditions and historic wildfires the past few years continue to decrease their numbers as they wing across Texas this spring. Worse news: milkweed plants – the only kind they need to survive – are also not in plentiful supply, says a Texas A&M University Monarch watcher.

Craig Wilson, a senior research associate in the Center for Mathematics and Science Education and a longtime butterfly enthusiast, says reports coming from Mexico where the Monarchs have their breeding grounds show their numbers are significantly down, a disturbing trend during much of the past decade.

Wilson explains “The severe drought in Texas and much of the Southwest continues to wreak havoc with the number of Monarchs. The conditions have been dry both here and in Mexico in recent years. It takes four generations of the insects to make it all of the way up to Canada, and because of lack of milkweed along the way, a lot of them just don’t make it.”

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/Monarch-butterflies-migration-2013.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis