Martin Klein, who like myself posted the story about the massacre of the monarchs to his weblog, sent me a link to this LA Times story refuting the claim: “The Mexican environmental watchdog Profepa announced that a scientific
analysis of 300 butterfly corpses from the Cerro San Andres sanctuary in central
Michoacan state showed no traces of toxic substances from pesticides.
It concluded that the butterflies had died from the cold.” Klein, as a result, deleted the original post from his weblog. I, being the querrulous sort that I am, wonder instead whose interests Mexico’s environmental protection agency actually serves and what political power the Mexican timber concerns wield, and thus whether its announcement is credible or should be taken as a coverup. Googling on “Profepa AND Mexico” comes up with this. Here, incidentally, is last year’s coverage of concerns about the monarchs’ wintering grounds from ABC News. Klein’s blog is here. As a self-described “environmental bureaucrat” for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, perhaps he has a line on the credibility of Profepa that I don’t, but all I could think about were the scenes in Traffic about the gullible Americans’ cooperation with their corrupt Mexican counterparts in drug enforcement. Not to stereotype or anything, and why should I have any greater faith in the righteousness of, say, Whitman’s EPA?