“There was a bumper monarch butterfly migration to Mexico this winter. The population was 64 percent larger than last year’s and covered the largest land area since 2018. The butterflies remain far below their historical numbers, but seem to have stabilized in recent years,” notes The Doomslayer.
The Guardian reports that
the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 7.24 acres of forest from 4.42 acres the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018.
“The monarch butterfly is the symbol of the trilateral relationship between Mexico, the United States and Canada,” Mexican environment minister Alicia Bárcena Ibarra said at a news conference on Tuesday….
Every fall, tens of millions of the butterflies travel nearly 3,000 miles from Canada, across the US and finally to the forests of western Mexico. There, the orange insects cover entire trees and flutter through the air in spectacular fashion….
In the US, the increasing use of herbicides like glyphosate and dicamba has seen the amount of milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat, drop considerably, with butterfly numbers also plummeting as a result.
Jaguars are growing in number in Mexico and Argentina.
Bobcats recently returned to New Jersey after being absent from the state for 50 years.
Dramatic seabird recoveries have taken place on Mexico’s Pacific islands.
A species of rabbit thought to have gone extinct 120 years in Mexico was recently caught on camera, proving it is not extinct.
Brazil’s rarest parrots have made a comeback, avoiding extinction.
