Prosecutors in western Mexico said Wednesday they found eight people dead with gunshot wounds.

The bodies were found Wednesday in the township of Tuzantla, in the state of Michoacan, near the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly.

Michoacan state prosecutors said they found shell casings at the scene, and were investigating the circumstances surrounding the killings. The bodies were undergoing autopsies, they said.

Michoacan has been riven for years by bloody turf wars among drug cartels, and there was no immediate indication the killings had anything to do with the monarch butterfly reserve.

Monarch butterflies migrate every year from the United States and Canada to spend the winter in the mountaintop pine and fir forests west of Mexico City.

The butterflies, known for their bright orange and spotted wings spectacularly filling the sky on a nearly 2,500-mile journey every year, are now "closer to the brink" of extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said last month. Over the past decade, its population has shrunk by between 22% to 72%, depending on the measurement method used, according to the IUCN.

Source