Monarch butterflies migrate as far as 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico to spend the winter in the forests of Michoacán. There used to be hundreds of millions of monarchs making this incredible journey, but over the past three decades, their numbers have plummeted by 90%. These iconic butterflies face threats throughout their range and migration, from pesticides to climate change to habitat loss. But the safe haven of their overwintering grounds is threatened by one main culprit: avocados.
Michoacán is the largest supplier of avocados to the United States, and the industry has expanded rapidly as our love of guacamole and avocado toast has grown over the past decade. In ten years more ten football fields a day of forests have been cleared to grow more avocados — including nearly 2,400 acres in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Research from Climate Rights International has linked avocados from deforested land to importers that supply major U.S. grocery stores.
Monarch butterflies have been proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, but they can’t survive without their overwintering grounds. In addition to deforestation within the Reserve, the loss of surrounding forests — compounded by climate change and drought, worsened by the enormous amount of water used to grow avocados — threaten the integrity of this unique, irreplaceable habitat.
Eighty-five percent of the avocados grown in Michoacán are certified for export to the United States, giving U.S. retailers and importers enormous power to transform this industry and save monarch butterflies by only selling avocados that weren’t grown on recently deforested land.
The Michoacán government recently established the Pro-Forest Avocado certification program, which provides the tools to track deforestation in your supply chain and the assurance for your customers that your avocados aren’t contributing to wildlife extinction. As conservationists we support this certification program as an important tool in the efforts to stop deforestation and save monarch butterflies across the United States.
We encourage you to immediately pass a corporate policy to source only deforestation-free avocados by requiring all suppliers to participate in the Pro-Forest Avocado certification program.
