In January 2020, my friend and fellow monarch butterfly protector Homero Gomez Gonzalez was found dead in Mexico. Homero managed a monarch butterfly sanctuary in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Homero was protecting the Mexican forests from avocado militias who are cutting down the forests where the monarch butterfly migrates for the winter. The huge demand for avocados from the US and Canada creates an incentive for drug cartels to cut down the forest and claim protected woodland to grow more avocados, known as "green gold" in Mexico.

Read the New York Times story "Missing Monarch Butterfly Activist Found Dead in Mexico"

Please sign the petition to ask grocery stores to offer only Fair Trade avocados.  And please boycott all other avocados from Mexico.  

Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry is based in Mexico, in the same region monarch butterflies rest for the winter.  Drug cartels seize avocado farms and local farmers have to organize their own armed paramilitary forces to protect their groves. Drug cartels kill people like Homero who are protecting them.  Over 60,000 people have gone missing and presumed dead since 2006, many of the human rights and environmental protectors. 

Monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles to migrate to these forests from Canada and the United States. Like thousands of other Americans and Canadians, I built a monarch way station in my yard. Monarch habitat has been devastated by Round Up that kills their main food source: milkweed.

As part of the Monarch Watch Wayside Program, thousands of us are helping the monarch, which has been pushed to the edge of extinction.  Every August, I sent Homero a note with how many monarchs were born in my garden.  Last August, I told Homero "Sending you 78 beautiful monarchs... thank you for welcoming them to their Mexican home".  

There are already thousands of people boycotting "blood avocados" just as we did "blood diamonds' when we learned how much people suffer and die for these goods. Does an avocado taste good when you know it fuels violence and death?

• Read more here: The Guardian's article Should you Stop Eating Blood Avocados 
• The Los Angeles Times: There is Blood in Your Guacamole
• On Twitter the hashtag "#boycottavocados" started before Super Bowl Sunday when many parties feature guacamole

Please sign the petition to gocery stores to ask that they offer only Fair Trade avocados.  And please boycott all other avocados from Mexico.  

Please consider only eating avocados when in season when they are grown in the US.

PLEASE SHARE THIS PETITION!

And you can donate to continue his work with either of these two reputable organizations:

Donate to the Monarch Butterfly Fund promotes activities that allow local residents to improve their quality of life and achieve self-sufficiency, and support the adoption of ecological techniques and community productive projects. In partnership with local organizations, we finance projects for the production of organic vegetables, organic fertilizers, fruit, and forest trees, as well as the construction of fuel-efficient stoves and cisterns to capture rainwater.

Donate to the World Wildlife Fund to support work with local communities to ensure a sustainable use of the butterfly's forest home