Community Conservation of Monarch Forest in Mexico

Reforestation for 2015 has started, before the rainy season catches up to us! Local communities and schools, along with our local partner Alternare, are in the forest, busy planting trees.  

During June, 9,042 trees were planted in 8.5 hectares at Carpinteros, Francisco Serrato, Cresencio Morales, Nicolás Romero and Donaciano Ojeda. Pine, oak, oyamel and honeysuckle seedlings from the 23 tree nurseries established and maintained by the communities were used. We continue seeking ways to optimize our reforestation strategy and tree survival rates, so we planted some trees using the organic fertilizer known as Bokashi to be able to compare their growth with those planted without it.

One of the participants from Francisco Serrato, who has been in charge of the reforestation in his community since 2007, enthusiastically told us, “We get water and fuel wood from the forest so it’s very important to reforest, we are giving the forest back what it so generously gives us.”

We also continued with our other activities holding 3 workshops on how to produce trees with the participation of 39 women and 14 men who produced 3,860 trees.

We are very excited to have more and more communities joining us helping us recover the forest and improving the situation for the monarchs.

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This year begins with exciting news from our local partner Alternare who continues to thrive. In the first trimester four workshops were held: three on how to build fuel-efficient stoves and one to build a cistern at a school In Rondanilla, Michoacan. The former included 36 women and 18 men who created 10 stoves, benefiting nine families and the Donaciano Ojeda elementary school. The latter included six women and 18 men, a wonderful outpouring of community spirit to help make the stoves and cistern a reality. 

Preparations are now in progress for the upcoming reforestation season as well. Communities and schools are doing an outstanding job maintaining their tree nurseries to have all the seedlings for this summer’s reforestation planting ready. We held a workshop with 16 women and 14 men who produced 2,000 pine, oyamel, oak, ash tree seedlings in the 21 nurseries established by Alternare. A total of 31,371 trees are now under the communities’ care. We plan to reforest 16 hectares in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve’s buffer zone this year and everything looks ready.

The monarchs were late in leaving the overwintering sites in Mexico but they are now heading north to their summer breeding grounds. Preliminary numbers indicate that the monarch population is slowly recovering with increased monarch sightings reported in some parts of Texas. Extended weather forecasts for the northern breeding grounds look favorable and we are all hoping the monarch population will once again expand this year. We’ll keep monitoring their progress as a new generation is born and joins their migration north.

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