Yahoo News (AP): Reserve saves trees but not monarch butterflies

ZITACUARO, Mexico – This small patch of mountain fir forest is a model of sorts for the global effort to save trees and fight climate change. The problem is that saving trees has not saved the forest’s most famous visitors: Monarch butterflies.

Millions of Monarch butterflies migrate here from the United States and Canada every year, but their numbers declined by 75 percent last year alone, apparently because of changing weather and vegetation patterns.

The Monarch butterfly reserve shows how complex the battle against climate change has become, as the world prepares for a United Nations climate conference in Cancun next week. The conference is expected to focus in part on how best to preserve forests, with questions about who should pay and and how to treat communities who already live in the jungles and forests of developing countries.

Forest preservation is the goal of a popular U.N.-sponsored program known as REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, which garnered more mentions than any other program approved at the last international climate meeting in Copenhagen. The hope is for developed nations to pay poorer ones $22 to $38 billion per year to help them preserve forests.

“It is not a hypothetical idea or theory,” said Mexico’s Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada of the REDD program. “It’s working in many countries around the world. What we really require is….that it convert into an agreement at Cancun.”…..Read More

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Posted by Jose Reyes on Nov 27 2010. Filed under Current News, Post To Slider, Science News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.