Mario Castaneda Rojas, director of the Nevado de Toluca reserve, said officials stopped in their tracks when a butterfly crossed their path. At the end of last month, Mexican officials announced that the overall population of monarch butterflies wintering in central Mexico was up 144 per cent over the previous year. Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch and an ecology professor at the University of Kansas, who runs a monarch tagging program, said that established colonies normally have butterflies. While some colonies are open to the public, government officials say the newly registered colony in Nevado de Toluca won’t be. But logging is still visible within the park, even though officials say it is carefully regulated and mainly aimed at removing diseased or wind-downed trees.

Source: National Post February 15, 2019 20:37 UTC