Wildlife

Monarch Recovery

Experts at Mexico’s El Rosario butterfly sanctuary say there were 35% more monarch butterflies spending the past winter there than during the previous season. They suggest the colourful insects could be adapting to the changing climate by adjusting the date they begin migrating northward to the United States and Canada for the summer. “They left very late. We still had butterflies in April,” said Gloria Tavera of Mexico’s National Commission for Natural Protected Areas.

The migration has been challenged by more extreme bouts of heat and drought, along with a loss of the milkweed that their caterpillars feed on north of the border. Illegal felling of trees around the sanctuary also threatens the species.

Vanishing Birds

Almost half of all known bird species are suffering population losses as the winged creatures die from climate change, habitat loss and overexploitation, according to a new report. “We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species,” says conservation biologist Alexander Lees from Britain’s Manchester Metropolitan University.

He and colleagues at Cornell University and other institutions document in the report State of the World’s Birds how approximately 48% of all bird species are believed to be experiencing population declines. They say climate change is the greatest factor in the bird losses.

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