Date: 01/01/2009

Number: 1

Overwintering site

The number of butterflies at
sites such as the famous Washington Park in Pacific Grove, Natural
Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, and Ellwood in Santa Barbara, are
dramatically smaller than ten or twenty years ago (all anecdotal - no
hard numbers).

Pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos, malathion,
diazinon, and their toxic breakdown products could be the culprit in
the seemingly steady decline of the number of monarch butterflies at
the wintering colonies in the Golden State. Perhaps pesticides blown
in to the Sierra Nevada and foothills from the Central Valley are
killing the eggs, larvae, and pupae of Danaus plexippus, just as these chemicals are killing amphibians.

March 2 from Jessica Griffiths
Colony still hasn't dispersed yet (still almost 12K monarchs there as of last week)

Pacific Grove, CA

Latitude: 36.6 Longitude: -121.9

Observed by:
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