NEWS UPDATES ON THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY

Further Environmental Threats to the Monarch Butterfly

Threat in the South from deforestation

Looking-Glass reports on the threat to one of the great wonders of the natural world, the Monarch butterfly. The species is in serious threat of extinction due to deforestation. Every year, tens of millions of monarch butterflies migrate from the United States and Canada to spend the winter on a few remote forest mountains in central Mexico where they huddle together for warmth on the branches of the oyumel trees. In spring they leave, dispersing across North America where they spend the warm summer months before heading south again as the weather turns cold. The round trip is 14,000 kilometres (8,700 miles) and an incredible five generations. The parents pass on genetic maps so the young can navigate their way back to the Mexican oyumel forests. Mexican authorities only have a single generation to stop illegal logging from decimating the few remaining islands of oyumel forest and therefore destroying the Monarch's over-wintering habitats forever.

New threat in the North from GM Crops

New and additional threats faces the monarch butterfly during their migration to North America. Pollen from gene altered corn appears to be killing the butterflies. Milkweed grows in abundance amongst and around the corn. Pollen from the corn lands on the Milkweed, which is a favorite food of the Monarch. One in five monarch larvae are known to be dying after being exposed to the toxic corn pollen.

This article last updated or added to in: May2002

For more "Animal News" articles please click here

For discussion on these issues see GGL's at VeggieGlobal.com

Related Reading Reference
Choose either Amazon UK (.co.uk) or Amazon USA (.com)

Today's news that effects tomorrow's world shouldn't be forgotten ...

Top Stories
Animals
Environment
Oceans
Humanitarian
Cosmos
Opinion

Front Page
About This News Site
Sites News

Looking-Glass & VeggieGlobal are free, non-profit resources also bringing you this animal, environmental and humanitarian news site. Please use CauseClick to reciprocally help this and other good-causes. Thank you.

General World News
European Vegetarian and Animal News Agency Headlines
Environment
General Animal News
Film
Music
Space
Personal Technology
Computers Virus Warnings

Brought to you through LOOKING-GLASS.TV

music - pop
music - classical
broadcast industry
film industry
theatre
european media
arts and culture
dance - ballet
dvd

Looking-Glass News Info

Find out more about this News Site

Use the search engine at the top of this page if you would like to look for other stories which may be archived on LGVN.

Main Archive Search
Pre 2001 archives

Visit the LGVN front page for main stories

CauseClick ...

This is a voluntary-based non-profit news site. If it has been useful to you please consider a donation. Thank you.

Where am I?

You are currently viewing the news site which is part of a unique non-profit web retreat.
Looking-Glass.co.uk and its sister site VeggieGlobal.com provide extensive resources on vegetarianism, animal welfare, humanitarianism, conservation, global healing campaigns and more.

This retreat is designed to help empower and inspire the world to think and act with natural diligence and compassion.

If the free services we provide here are proving useful to you, please make a donation. Your generosity will help keep this huge web experience alive, and in turn help the causes, campaigns and projects we also represent and work with.
You can also help by buying through the Good Cause Shopping Area
Or add a link to your favourite good-cause at the unique CauseClick grid.
Thank you.