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The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is a conservation area and World Heritage Site within the wintering grounds of most of the monarch butterflies that migrate from east of the Rocky Mountains for up to 4,000 km south to central Mexico. The reserve is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine-oak forests ecoregion on the border of Michoacán and Mexico State, 100 km (62 milles), northwest of Mexico City. It is estimated that between 60 million and 1 billion butterflies arrive in this area alone any given year.
While over 56,000 hectares are part of the biosphere reserve, the butterflies themselves only inhabit a fraction of this when they are in Mexico from October to March. The biosphere’s mission is not only to protect the butterfly species, but also to protect the ecosystem of which it is a part. This area, which hosts the majority of wintering monarchs from the east of the United States and Canada, has only been known to scientists since the 1970s. Protection of the area began with a series of presidential decrees in the 1980s, and a 2000 decree promoted the area to the status of federal biosphere reserve.
In 2008, the Reserve was inscribed on the list of World Heritage Sites. Although the montane site remains predominantly rural, a number of conservationists are concerned about the deleterious effects of illegal logging, growing tourism, and tensions between conservation authorities and communities inhabiting the land upon which the Reserve was established.
The monarch butterfly is noted for their lengthy annual migration. It is the only butterfly species known to make annual north-south migrations like many bird species do. Monarchs in North America roughly divided into two migrations. Those in the west tend to migrate toward California for the winter and those east of the Rocky Mountains migrate south. However, no single individual makes the entire round trip, as butterfly lifespans vary from just two months to about seven months for those who hibernate It is not clear how these monarchs know how to return to the same wintering sites as their ancestors, but flight patterns seem to be inherited.
The wintering areas of the butterfly are located on the mountainous forests that stretch across far eastern Michoacán state and far western Mexico State, about 100 km northwest of Mexico City. The area on the Michoacán side consists of the highest elevations of the state, including peaks that reach 2,700 masl. The climate of the region is classed as C(w2)(w)(b’(i”); or temperate and somewhat moist with a rainy season in the summer. Average maximum temperature is 22°C (71°F), with variance between 5 and 7°C.
There are fourteen major butterfly colonies located in these rugged forested mountains, which account for more than half of colonies of the monarch butterfly’s eastern U.S./Canada population. It is estimated that up to a billion individuals spend winter here in any given year. These colonies are dense, with between six and sixty million butterflies per hectare. The reserve areas are found in the municipalities of Ocampo, Angangueo, Zitácuaro and Contepec in Michoacán and Donato Guerra, Villa de Allende and Temascalcingo in the State of Mexico.
Five of the eight colonies are located in Michoacán but only two are open to the public: Sierra Chincua in Angangueo and El Rosario in Ocampo. Both receive visitors starting from November until March. They offer guided tours. In the State of Mexico, La Mesa and El Capulin are open to the public. These reserves are visited by thousands of Mexican and international tourists, principally from the United States, Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan. The best known and most visited of the butterfly colonies is El Rosario.
The survival of the species depends on a large number of habitats from Canada, the United States and Mexico during its annual migration cycle. The three countries adopted a plan in 2008 for the conservation of the butterfly’s habitat through its migration routes. Within the Biosphere in Mexico, the greatest threats to the butterfly habitat are deforestation, illegal logging, unorganized tourism, forest fires and lack of cooperation among various authorities.
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