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Mexico: The Myth of the Monarch Butterfly

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December 22, 2014

One butterfly weighs barely anything, but millions of butterflies can serve as a vital part of an ecosystem. Every November, migrating monarch butterflies arrive in Mexico for the winter.

With local farmers benefitting greatly from the butterflies, which pollinate their crops, and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve on the border of Michoacán and Mexico State drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, the monarch butterflies have an ecological and an economic value. The German Society for International Cooperation and the International Climate Initiative are devising ways to put a price tag to the 'services' the butterflies provide.

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