Mexico invests US$4.6 million to boost tourism in bid to protect monarch butterflies

Mexico announced a plan Sunday to pump pesos into a monarch butterfly reserve to boost tourism and create jobs in an impoverished area where illegal logging threatens the monarch’s habitat.

The 50 million peso (US$4.6 million, €3.1 million) plan will buy equipment and advertising for the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a 124,000-acre (50,180-hectare) wooded park in Mexico’s Michoacan state, where clouds of orange- and black-winged butterflies nest each winter after flying south from Canada and the U.S.

“It is possible to take care of the environment and at the same time promote development,” President Felipe Calderon said Sunday in a ceremony to celebrate the monarchs’ arrival.”*

Stumble it! | |