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Every tree used to be blanketed with them': photographer captures campaign to save monarch butterfly
Every tree used to be blanketed with them’: photographer captures campaign to save monarch butterfly
Robin McKie Science editor
Sun 29 Sep 2024 04.00 EDT
Jaime Rojo has been following the fate of the monarch butterfly for more than 20 years. In the process the Spanish photographer has watched one of the planet’s most colourful, flamboyant insect species succumb to the combined onslaught of habitat destruction, climate change, pesticides, drought and wildfires. Its population has crashed in the process.
It is a dramatic, disturbing story that will be recognised next month when Rojo is given a highly commended award for his photojournalism at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London.
The glories of the monarch – and human responses to them – are revealed in his startling images and could be critical in helping efforts by conservationists, scientists and local people who are now trying to overcome the threat facing these remarkable winged migrants.
“When I first visited the monarch sanctuary in Mexico, there were so many of them, the forest floor would be a carpet of dead monarchs up to half a metre thick and every tree was blanketed with them,” Rojo told the Observer. “It was extraordinary.
Snip...more...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/29/every-tree-used-to-be-blanketed-with-them-photographer-captures-campaign-to-save-monarch-butterfly
Robin McKie Science editor
Sun 29 Sep 2024 04.00 EDT
Jaime Rojo has been following the fate of the monarch butterfly for more than 20 years. In the process the Spanish photographer has watched one of the planet’s most colourful, flamboyant insect species succumb to the combined onslaught of habitat destruction, climate change, pesticides, drought and wildfires. Its population has crashed in the process.
It is a dramatic, disturbing story that will be recognised next month when Rojo is given a highly commended award for his photojournalism at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London.
The glories of the monarch – and human responses to them – are revealed in his startling images and could be critical in helping efforts by conservationists, scientists and local people who are now trying to overcome the threat facing these remarkable winged migrants.
“When I first visited the monarch sanctuary in Mexico, there were so many of them, the forest floor would be a carpet of dead monarchs up to half a metre thick and every tree was blanketed with them,” Rojo told the Observer. “It was extraordinary.
Snip...more...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/29/every-tree-used-to-be-blanketed-with-them-photographer-captures-campaign-to-save-monarch-butterfly
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
As stated, many trees and bushes were "coated" with them, and there were larvae caterpillars all over for months before that, during the spring
Now, I am lucky if I see even one in the summer. I can't recall the last time I saw a caterpillar either. It hasn't been since the late 1990s that I saw a caterpillar.
