Butterflies

Read an article the other day which said the Monarch butterfly population is down by 2/3 in Mexico, where they migrate to each winter. Funny because last year we had a huge Monarch influx here. Which leads to me a possibility. It is possible that, with climate change, the Monarchs may not be migrating as far south as they used to. They may be wintering in the southern US or northern Mexico.

That does pose problems, though. The area where they normally migrate to is protected. Here, they're not. Daughter and I went for a walk yesterday. We saw where the park service had cut down dozens of trees along the aqueducts and river delta for fire control. In so doing, they tore down thousands of branches which had once bore tens of thousands of cocoons. It looks like the vast majority of those branches were run through shredders. We found lots of small branches with cocoons still attached. (I didn't mention the shredders to her.) 

I understand the fire control issue but think this could have been planned a bit better. 

If many of those cocoons were Monarch, it's very possible the population was sorely reduced. 

I think daughter and I are going to have to take more walks and collect more cocoons off the ground very soon.