<
https://xerces.org/press/western-monarch-count-tallies-over-330000-butterflies>
"Portland, Ore.; Tuesday, January 31, 2023---In the weeks before heavy rains
battered the California coast, volunteers grabbed their binoculars and headed
out in an annual pilgrimage for a beloved animal. This year, their efforts for
the 26th Western Monarch Count paid off with good news: a final tally of
335,479 butterflies during the study’s Thanksgiving counting period.
“We can all celebrate this tally,” says Emma Pelton, a conservation biologist
at the Xerces Society and western monarch lead. “A second year in a row of
relatively good numbers gives us hope that there is still time to act to save
the western migration. That said, we know we still have a long way to go to
reach population recovery, and the storms that hit right afterwards mean we’ll
start the spring with far, far less than this total.”
The results are a welcome reprieve from a total of less than 2,000 individuals
counted in 2020 and nearly 250,000 in 2021. Yet the butterflies remain far from
the low millions seen in the 1980s, and their recovery remains vulnerable to
pressures like habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-tropical-diseases-womens-china-miyawaki-amazon/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
