Mexico | Experts say storms led to deaths of millions of monarchs

In this Nov. 12, 2015, file photo, a guide holds up a damaged and dying butterfly at the monarch butterfly reserve in Piedra Herrada

Storms earlier this year blew down more than a hundred acres of forests where migrating monarch butterflies spend the winter in central Mexico, killing more than 7 percent of the monarchs, experts reported on Tuesday.
Rain, cold and high winds from the storms caused the loss of 133 acres of pine and fir trees in the forests west of Mexico City, more than four times the amount lost to illegal logging this year.
This year’s storm also appears to have frozen or killed about 6.2 million butterflies, almost 7.4 percent of the estimated 84 million butterflies that wintered in Mexico, said Alejandro Del Mazo, the attorney general for environmental protection.
“Never had we observed such a combination of high winds, rain and freezing temperatures,” monarch expert Lincoln Brower said of the storms, which struck March 8-9.
“This points up just how fragile these forests are, and how fragile the monarchs are, and it makes clear the importance of reforestation efforts,” said Omar Vidal, director of the conservation group World Wildlife Fund Mexico, which carried out the forest survey along with experts from Mexico’s National Autonomous University and the government.
The monarchs depend on finding relatively well-
preserved forests, where millions of the orange-­and-black butterflies hang in clumps from the boughs.
The damage comes after a rebound for the monarch. The area covered by the butterflies this winter was more than 3 1/2 times that of a year earlier. They clump so densely in the pine and fir forests that they are counted by the area they cover rather than by individual insects. MDT/AP