June 16, 2016
Some 200 intellectuals,
scientists and artists from around the world urged the leaders of Mexico, the
United States and Canada on Wednesday to save North America's endangered
migratory Monarch butterfly.
US novelist Paul Auster,
environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Canadian poet Margaret Atwood,
British writer Ali Smith and India's women's and children's minister Maneka
Sanjay Gandhi were among the signatories of an open letter to the three
leaders.
US President Barack Obama,
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto
will hold a North American summit in Ottawa on June 29.
The letter by the so-called Group
of 100 calls on the three leaders to "take swift and energetic actions to
preserve the Monarch's migratory phenomenon" when they meet this month.
They urge the leaders to protect
parcels of land containing milkweed, which is threatened by herbicides and
feeds the butterflies on their 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) journey from Canada
to Mexico's wintering grounds.
The letter also called on Mexico
to prohibit mining and end all logging in the pine tree reserve where the
butterflies live during the winter.
In 2014, Obama, Pena Nieto and
then prime minister Stephen
Harper agreed to take measures to protect the orange and black butterfly, whose
population has drastically dwindled in the past two decades.
The butterfly's population
rebounded this past winter season, but it is still far from its peak of 20
years ago.
In 1996-1997, the butterflies
covered 18.2 hectares (45 acres) of land in Mexico's central mountains.
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