Tree-eating bugs threaten Monarch butterfly in Mexico

[Staff]

Tree-eating bugs threaten Monarch butterfly in Mexico
Sat Nov 21, 11:47 am ET

Tree-eating bugs threaten Monarch butterfly in Mexico - Yahoo! News
excerpt from above:

MORELIA, Mexico (AFP) – The mysterious Monarch butterfly, which migrates en masse annually between Canada and Mexico, is now facing a new peril: another insect thriving in Western Mexican forests.

Some 8,000 oyamel fir trees -- the butterflies' unique mountain habitat each winter -- were cut down in July in a bid to remove beetles...

[Pahinh Winh]

What a distinctly NON-brilliant move, cutting down the trees to try to get rid of the bugs. typically non-brilliant, non-thinking.. flat out stupid. Raise stink on one hand about biodiversity & saving the planet & then further endanger the Monarchs with a move like that, when there are so many methods available to try first. And the people who did this are members of "the species that thinks"?? Naah!

[Staff]

Beetles hit Monarch's trees in Mexico
By Mark Stevenson Associated Press
Oct. 20, 2009, 1:51PM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/6676675.html
excerpt from above:

Authorities who have struggled to stop illegal logging in Mexico's famed monarch butterfly reserve now are cutting down thousands of trees themselves to fight an unprecedented infestation of deadly bark beetles.
Biologists and park workers are racing to fell as many as 9,000 infected fir trees and bury or extract infested wood before the orange-and-black monarchs start arriving in late October to spend the winter bunched together on branches, carpeting the trees.

[Equilibrium]

We don't know enough facts. There were some pheromone trials... don't know how those ended up. We should check around to see about that before pointing fingers but I will say on the surface this doesn't look good. Their people are poor and they were never compensated for the logging limitations placed on them... that means they're going to keep up the logging and there's no way to stop them. Harvesting continued... that's a fact even before the "authorities" stepped in. This is a 60 sq mile critically endangered forest system the monarchs depend on to conserve energy until spring... where will they go where they won't freeze... I have no idea but the beetle is a very real threat and action has to be taken or no more pretty monarchs to take photos of.