Billionaire Mexican Carlos Slim Joins Effort to Save the Monarch Butterfly Dolia Estevez - Forbes
go to original February 12, 2014

Since 2008, the Carlos Slim Foundation has been working with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Mexican Ministry of the Environment to support biodiversity conservation strategies including the daunting task of preventing the monarchs butterflies from vanishing. Due to extreme weather and vanishing habitats, the monarch population continued its alarming decline last year.

Arturo Elías Ayub, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim’s spokesperson and son-in law, told me that the Carlos Slim Foundation, which has a of $5 billion, has invested $100 million in five different conservation programs in Mexico. The restoration of the monarch butterfly reserve is one of those programs.

According to data collected by the WWF-Telcel Alliance and the Mexican government, the number of monarch butterflies hibernating in Mexico reached an all-time low in 2013. A new survey of forested area used by hibernating monarchs showed that just 1.65 acres of forest were inhabited by monarchs during December 2013, a 44% drop from the same time the previous year. The findings represent the lowest area since surveys began in 1993. At their peak in 1996, the monarchs occupied nearly 45 acres of forest.

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