Wildlife

Monarch Decline

Even though the number of monarch butterflies that reached their wintering grounds in Mexico decreased by more than half this season, experts said the plunge is not alarming.

The Mexico director of the World Wildlife Fund told reporters that the previous winter’s numbers were unusually high because the first generation of the migrating insects in the spring of 2018 had encountered favorable breeding conditions as they headed northward toward the eastern U.S. and Canada.

But those fluttering northward in 2019 encountered colder conditions in Texas, which made them less able to reproduce.

Early reports from Texas this spring say the monarchs have arrived at least three weeks earlier than expected, thanks to unseasonably warm weather in Mexico.

Coronavirus Risk

A refuge that is home to many of East Africa’s mountain gorillas has been closed to protect the endangered primates from exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

Officials at Congo’s Virunga National Park say they will bar visitors until at least June 1 after experts warned that the gorillas are likely susceptible to complications from the coronavirus.

Similar actions have been taken in neighboring Rwanda to protect that country’s gorillas and chimpanzees.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Uke8rk