Mission & Background

Background on MBSF  |  Presidential Decrees 1986   2000

Background on MBSF

Each fall, eastern North American monarch butterflies migrate up to 2,000 miles to high-altitude Oyamel fir forests in central Mexico. There, over 100 million monarchs overwinter, awaiting the spring arrival of milkweed in North America, the only source of food for their offspring. The unique ecosystem of the Oyamel fir forests is key to the monarchs’ winter survival, yet these forests are threatened by wood harvesting and other human pressures. 

The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation, founded in August 1997, is a unique people-to-people initiative whereby trees will be protected using sound scientific reasoning and close cooperation with the owners of the land on which they exist.

The Oyamel fir forest ecosystem in the central volcanic highlands of Mexico is the most endangered in Mexico. This area of about 60 square miles provides unique microclimatic conditions: cool weather enables the butterflies to conserve their energy reserves for their return migration north; the trees serve as a buffer to wind, cold, snow and rain; nearby streams provide a source of water from which the monarchs can drink on sunny days; and fog and clouds provide moisture to prevent their bodies from drying out.

A 1986 Mexican presidential decree created the "Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca," the Monarch Butterfly Special Biosphere Reserve. This decree provided two zones of protection in five of the 13 known overwintering areas: a nuclear zone in which no cutting is allowed and a buffer zone in which limited cutting is allowed. Most of this land is owned communally by peasant families who have not been adequately compensated for the logging limitations imposed by the decree. Logging occurs in and around the sanctuaries — on a legal and illegal basis — posing a threat to the monarch’s winter habitat.

According to monarch biologist Dr. Lincoln Brower, chairman of Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation, "Over the past 20 years, substantial sums of money and enormous energy have been directed toward monarch conservation in Mexico, but have failed to address long-term conservation of the dwindling Oyamel forest ecosystem. At the same time, the economic needs of the people who depend on the forest for survival have never been adequately addressed. A solution is needed that will allow the people and the butterflies to co-exist with the forest in a long-term sustainable manner."

The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation is addressing this concern by focusing on environmental education, economic development, and research. Explains MBSF President Dr. Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota, "This approach is unique in that it will finally address the needs of monarchs—as well as the needs of the people who own the land on which the monarchs overwinter. As a private initiative, this project connects the citizens of the United States and Canada who care about monarchs with the very people in Mexico who live near the sanctuaries—and on whose future the monarch depends."

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