SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Mexico Cuts Down Trees to Save Monarch Butterflies

from the Christian Science Monitor

Mexico City (Associated Press) -- 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.

Environmentalists say the forest canopy of tall firs is essential to shelter the butterflies on their annual migration through Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The journey is tracked by scholars and schoolchildren across North America and draws tens of thousands of tourists to the reserve, a U.N. Heritage site.