Mexican guides, farms hope butterfly rebound takes flight
MEXICO CITY — Communal farmers and butterfly guides are hoping for a rebound in the number of monarch butterflies — and tourists — at their wintering grounds in central Mexico after a bad year for both in 2020.
Experts say it is too early to calculate the number of monarchs, which migrate from the U.S. and Canada each year to forests west of Mexico’s capital. A formal survey will be carried out later this month.
But the butterflies have come to represent an important source of income for the farmers who own much of the pine and fir forest where the monarchs clump together in trees.
Already this year, some of the orange-and-black monarchs have settled into trees for the winter.
After a devastating drop in tourism because of the pandemic last year, and a 26% drop in the number of butterflies, farmer and tourist guide Silvestre de Jesus Cruz, 49, is pinning his hopes on a better year for both this year.
“Last year was a little harder, because there were a lot fewer people. But this year is going to be good,” De Jesus Cruz said.
“A lot of the communal farm families depend on this,” said the 21-year veteran of guide work, “not just us guides, but also the people down there in the parking lot selling food. A lot of people.”
In the offseason — the butterflies arrive in November and leave around March — de Jesus Cruz plants corn and oats on his small farm parcel.
But those crops don’t provide much cash.
Cash income comes from tourism, and because of the coronavirus pandemic, only about 40,000 people visited the dozen or so butterfly wintering grounds on isolated mountain tops last year, down from 80,000 in previous years.
De Jesus Cruz explains that guides are taking extra precautions because of the pandemic, like requiring masks and taking visitors’ temperatures before they are allowed in.
That creates some special challenges, given that tourists must hike up several hundred yards of steep trails to get to the ultraprotected areas where the butterflies clump, in area already high in altitude.
Due to myriad factors, monarch numbers dropped last year.
Experts say drought, severe weather and loss of habitat — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use, and climate change, all pose threats to the species’ migration.
Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms also continues to plague the reserves.
Gloria Tavera, the regional director for the National Council on Protected Areas, said it is too early to tell is this year will mark an increase in the number of butterflies, or tourists.
“It would be risky to say so. We won’t know until December, once we inspect all the (butterfly) colonies,” Tavera said.
As for a return of tourists, she says, “let’s hope so.”