By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now

Up close they are such delicate creatures, their bright orange wings outlined in black and accented with white spots. But when they migrate by the millions each year — from Canada through the United States and most to a specific mountainous region of Mexico and back – monarch butterflies become one of nature’s most breathtaking spectacles.

Their tiny brains are hard-wired with biological clocks, and their eyes detect ultraviolet light variations to guide them. Every year, generations of the beautiful monarchs travel from 1,200 to 2,800 miles to their winter and summer habitats. Because most adults only live four weeks, they only travel part of the way. Then their offspring continue the trek, and on and on until they reach their habitats.

Their amazing migration has become a “threatened phenomenon,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Forest clearing in Mexico, climate change from Canada to Mexico, diminishing habitats in the U.S. and a decline in the monarchs’ primary source of food – milkweed – are blamed for changes and disruptions that may forever alter the butterflies’ spectacular migrations.

The summer destination for butterflies who live east of the Rocky Mountains is a very specific spot in central Mexico: a 217-square-mile area of 12 mountaintops covered in oyamel fir trees. More than a billion butterflies spend winters there.

For years, that mountainous home has faced deforestation for agriculture, intentional forest fires and wood for heat. Losing the shelter of their trees exposes monarchs to wind and cold — millions of them have already died, according to a report in Science Daily. University of Kansas researchers who have created the Monarch Watch program to track the insects in their Mexican habitat (also known as the Monarch Biosphere Reserve) say the monarch populations have been decreasing yearly.

Other researchers say climate change is harming monarchs’ habitats in both the north and south. In the mountains of Mexico, the climate is predicted to get wetter and colder in the next half-century, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Monarchs cannot survive rain followed by freezing temperatures.

In the eastern U.S. and Canada, monarchs may face global warming’s hotter, drier summers, which would push their migration farther north, making it longer. Hot, dry weather could impact their food supply – the monarch primarily eats and lays its eggs on the milkweed plant – as well as their ability to reproduce and survive. Urban sprawl in the U.S. – particularly in California, where monarchs from west of the Rockies spend their winters — is eating away at the insects’ habitat and food supply, scientists and environmental groups say.

The milkweed is considered a toxic and illegal weed in Canada, and in the U.S. many farmers kill it. There are about 115 species of milkweed in the U.S. and Caribbean, which allows the plant to grow in all climate zones monarchs pass through. Not all of those species are toxic to livestock.

In America, many fields planted with soybeans and corn are increasingly genetically modified in ways that diminish or eliminate milkweed.

Last year, the three nations where monarchs fly came together to create the North American Monarch Conservation Plan. They pinpointed threats to the monarch migrations, recommended steps to stop deforestation and habitat loss, and supported research of changes in breeding habits and monitoring migrations.

A key component of the study is to develop alternate ways for those who are clearing Mexico’s mountain forests to make a living. Also, Mexico’s government has issued three federal decrees to protect monarch habitats in their country.

There are many other programs in place to study and aid the monarchs’ migration. The Monarch Watch program supports “waystations” that provide nectar sources and plenty of breeding space. In 2007, the conservation plan says, there were more than 1,800 waystations.

Journey North, the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation, the Michoacan Reforestation Fund, the Monarch Program, and Monarchs in the Classroom are other programs that raise money to support the insects and increase awareness of them.

There are also 13 monarch butterfly “sister-protected area networks” that stretch from Mexico to Long Point National Wildlife Area in Ontario, large spaces of land that provide all the monarch essentials.

You can help track the numbers of monarchs (and other butterflies) in your area by joining the North American Butterfly Association’s annual Fourth of July butterfly count (the count actually occurs over a period of days around July 4). Volunteers can join the association and then sign up online or use their site to locate the organizer in your area and join in the counting of beautiful butterflies.

Photo credits: (Photo from MonarchLab, University of Minnesota; Monarch on Bottlebrush flower, from North American Monarch Conservation Plan; dead monarches on a forest floor, from Ecolife Foundation; cluster of monarchs in winter habitat, photo from Texas Parks and Wildlife, Monarch Migration page

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Every spring, as sure as the sun warms the cedars and the birds flock back from Mexico, Lee Clauser leads a stealth group of intense adults dressed in khakis and boots to the edge of a wild thicket near his house in north central Texas.

They creep into the brush, quietly unloading their weapons of mass observation.

Putting binoculars to eyes, they look, and listen, for the brilliant Golden-cheeked warbler, and for the reclusive Black-capped vireo. Both songbirds are listed as endangered in the United States, their nesting grounds having been narrowed to a strip of Texas Hill Country that supplies just the right shrubbery and old-growth cedars. The birders, who come from Fort Worth, Dallas, New England, the Pacific Northwest and beyond, know that catching a glimpse of one of these delicate creatures is a rare treat.

“People have come from Europe to see those birds, both species. For birders all over the world, it’s a huge deal,” says Clauser, a retired banker and life-long bird rescue and rehabilitation expert.

“Texas is the only place in the entire world that they nest,” confirms Gail Morris, president of the Fort Worth Audubon Society. “They require certain junipers and ash and that habitat is just not available anywhere.”

The Black-Cap (estimated population 6,000) and the Golden-cheek (estimated population 21,000) have been listed as endangered for nearly two decades, according to government records. The reason for their decline and the biggest threat to their recovery is one and the same: Loss of habitat to residential and commercial growth.

In Texas, exurbia, agriculture and industrial pursuits – cement plants, landfills, gas drilling – have encroached on the birds. . . and are poised to claim even more of them. The forests favored by Clauser’s bird groups occupy land adjacent to a proposed gravel pit that would bring rock blasting and mining nearly certain to affect the vireo and the warbler.

A Story Echoed Everywhere

Sadly, it is a common story, replayed across the globe. From Sumatra to China to the United States, animals are being crowded out by residential sprawl and human “improvements” to the land. The answer — to hold the line on the growth – has proven difficult to impossible in many cases.

“Habitat loss is the biggest driver of species endangerment in the world,” says Colby Loucks, deputy director for the Conservation Science Program at the World Wildlife Fund. And it’s hard to fight, whether the animal in immediate harm’s way is a Texas songbird or a Pacific sea turtle.

Civilization is crashing into natural places such as the Baja region of Mexico, where massive tourist expansion is projected to bring a ten-fold increase in population, imperiling not just the sea turtles that nest there, but the region’s freshwater, which supports the wildlife and the people, Loucks said.

It’s happening, too, in central China where roads and railroads designed to bring development to the mountainous wilderness, are carving up the ancient byways used by the Giant Panda to migrate to new bamboo forests. And it’s happening in the Appalachians, where mountaintop coal mining is filling valleys with slag and pollution, stifling stream life, lacing the ecosystem with mercury and heading straight for our tap water.

Scientists like Loucks, and others, are increasingly stressing the big picture: That we need to preserve our planet’s biodiversity and recognize the inter-connectivity of animals and plants, large and small, because we’re all perched on the same slippery slope.

Polar bears, penguins, pandas have become symbols of the fight to save wild places around the world and push back global warming.

According to conservationists meeting in Barcelona this week, they have a host of company. A broad assessment of the world’s mammals reveals an “extinction crisis” with nearly one-quarter of known mammal species at risk of disappearing forever due to habitat loss, pollution, global warming, over-hunting and food chain erosion.

The study, unveiled at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, shows that 1,141 (and possibly nearly 2,000) of the world’s 5,487 mammals are known to be threatened with extinction.

Natural processes – or natural selection as Darwin termed it – accounts for some loss of species over time, and since the year 1500 at least 76 mammals have known to become extinct.

But the number of threatened species being pushed toward extinction today is skyrocketing due to human pressure on the planet’s resources, according to the IUCN, a network of scientists, conservationists, governments and policy organizations.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General, in a statement.

Recovery efforts and better data collection must begin in earnest to turn the tide, she said.

The report cited examples of several species that have been nurtured back from near extinction, such as the Wild Horse, which was listed as Extinct in the Wild in 1996 but brought back to Critically Endangered status since been reintroduced into the wild in Mongolia.

Overall, the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species identifies 44,838 total species worldwide in danger right now. (See a video of selected threatened species at this link.)

Of those, 16,928 – or about 38 percent are threatened with extinction. Of that number:

• 3,246 are Critically Endangered, the highest category of threat, which includes species that are “in all probability” already extinct but further evidence is needed

• 4,770 are listed as Endangered

• 8,912 are listed as Vulnerable

The IUCN has posted a photo galllery with case studies of affected animals to help people see some of the species being affected, such as the African Elephant, the Iberian Lynx and the Caspian Seal.

The project to assess the world’s mammals was conducted with help from 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries. Collaborating institutions included Conservation International in Washington D.C., and unversities such as Sapienza Università di Roma, Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, and the Zoological Society of London.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature brings together governments, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and companies to develop policies and best practices in the arena of conservation. The global network, based in Switzerland, includes more than 11,000 volunteer scientists and experts in more than 150 countries.

Some 7,000 experts work on the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Certain species of large whales, particularly humpbacks, are less threatened now than they were when whaling bans took effect in the ’80s, according to a new report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Geneva-based IUCN, which describes itself as “the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network” and counts nearly eleven thousand scientists around the world as volunteers, is the author of a Red List which for four decades has kept tabs on the status of plant and animal species worldwide, focusing on conveying “the urgency and scale of conservation problems to the public and policy makers, and to motivate the global community to try to reduce species extinctions.”

In the 2008 Red List, the humpback’s situation is described as one of “Least Concern,” meaning its odds of extinction are low, although two subpopulations are still considered “Endangered.” (This page provides an exhaustive explanation of the organization’s approach to categorizing risk.) The group attributes the whales’ resurgence to legal protections against commercial hunting, though it says whales do face the threat of accidental entanglement in fishing gear, strandings caused by military sonar, and the various effects of climate change.

The news, unsurprisingly, is not all good. The latest Red List finds that “Most small coastal and freshwater cetaceans,” — a category that includes dolphins and porpoise — “are moving closer to extinction.” The IUCN also notes that the overall picture could be worse than reported, since they don’t have enough data to make accurate assessments of nearly half of cetacean species.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media