Mexico Wood Cutting Hurts Monarchs Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Mexico Wood Cutting Hurts Monarchs By John Rice Associated Press Writer Monday, April 19, 1999; 3:45 a.m. EDT MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Illegal logging is endangering the monarch butterfly, which winters in Mexico after migrating yearly from Canada and the United States, an environmental group says. Environmentalists fear the loss of the forests will hurt the butterflies, which rely on oyamel pines west of Mexico City to spend the winter and breed. ``We are in a sort of blind alley, without a solution,'' said novelist and poet Homero Aridjis, who heads the environmentalist Group of 100. Mexico, Canada and the United States have tried to cooperate in protecting the butterflies, whose unusual migration has attracted the interest of experts and science projects by schoolchildren across North America. But Aridjis said Sunday the two northern governments had not done enough. His group said recent surveys by the federal environmental prosecutor's office showed that four out of 10 communities in the region had cut twice the amount of wood authorized. The six other communities surveyed also had cut more wood than allowed. One of the most affected areas was El Rosario in Michoacan state, where officials have tried to develop environmental tourism as an economic alternative to logging. El Rosario attracts tens of thousands of tourists during the winter. But many other areas are more difficult to reach. The oyamel forests are owned by dozens of impoverished and overcrowded rural communities, which cut the trees for firewood, lumber or to clear the land for farming. The government has tried to limit cutting to a sustainable level, but illegal woodcutting persists. Enforcement is often left to state police agencies, which have been chronically corrupt. Aridjis suggested that the governments or environmentalists buy the reserves to protect the butterflies. Similar plans have been criticized by those who fear they would leave the communities with too little land or force them to relocate. (c) Copyright 1999 The Associated Press ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-04.24.99-10:44:35-25232