'Ambition of avocado' imperils monarch butterflies' winter home

The green volcanic hills that tower above Apútzio de Juárez, Mexico have begun to fill with swarms of monarch butterflies, which return each year for the winter stretch of their celebrated migration. But downhill from the monarchs’ mountain roost, in the oak and pine forests that border this small farming town, there lurks a new threat to their winter habitat: a lust to grow the lucrative avocados that are being consumed at record rates in the US.

Spurred by soaring demand, farmers in the western state of Michoacan are clearing land to make room for avocado orchards, cutting oak and pine trees that form a vital buffer around the mountain forests where the monarchs nest. “It’s scandalous what people are doing now to grow avocado,” said Arturo Espinosa Maceda, who has for years grown avocados, peaches and strelizia flowers at a farm some 12 miles north of Apútzio. “But it’s mega-business.”

Apútzio sits on the western edge of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a 135,000-acre protected area where the butterflies rest on oyamel trees. The butterflies’ numbers have dwindled sharply in recent years, as milkweed declined in the US and deforestation affected their Mexican habitat. Each year environmentalists hold their breath to see how many butterflies will arrive in Mexico. Omar Vidal, director general of the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, said that conserving the winter sanctuary was “fundamental to the survival of the migration.” Deforestation “has to be reduced to zero,” he said. But the avocado boom could complicate that goal.

Americans ate a record seven pounds of avocado per capita in 2015 according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly 80% of those avocados came from Michoacán, the only Mexican state authorised to export the fruit to the US. Michoacán doubled its avocado exports over the past seven years to 7,70,000 tonnes — worth roughly $1.5 billion.

The bonanza has been brutal for Michoacán’s oak and pine forests, which grow at 5,000 to 7,000 feet — the same altitude as avocados. Between 1974 and 2011, about 1,10,000 acres of forest across Michoacán’s central highlands were turned into avocado orchards, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. And deforestation is accelerating, experts said. Jaime Navía, president of GIRA, a non-governmental organisation based in Michoacán that promotes sustainable rural development, estimated that 65,000 acres (most of it forest) had been converted to avocado farms since that study. “The damage is irreversible,” he said.

Officials have blamed producers looking for a pretext to turn land over to avocado orchards for a spike in the number of forest fires in Michoacán this year. But forestry experts and farmers said that Mexico’s environmental watchdog, the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection, often turned a blind eye to abuses. Officials are fearful of powerful interests, they said, especially given that organised crime has links to the industry.

To offset deforestation, the association has planted half a million trees since 2009 and hopes to plant another half-million by 2018, he said. Around Apútzio de Juarez, a town of 1,100 people, scars on the hillsides and patches of young avocado trees signal the crop’s advance.

If people keep cutting down the forest, “we’ll run out,” Fernando Bernal, a butcher, said. And Apútzio isn’t the only community with much at stake. The hills that stretch northeast collect water for the massive Cutzamala water system that supplies the thirsty Mexican capital, Mexico City.

Even Davíd Romero Hernández, a farmer happily tending his avocado bushes on land once filled with mighty trees, is saddened by the loss of forest. He said that his village depends on water that comes from the hills near Apútzio. “So we’re all affected,” Davíd said. “But people don’t think about the future.”