Monarch Butterflies in Mexico
Just before Christmas we met one of our daughters and her partner for an outdoor visit, a concession to the threat of the rapidly spreading Omicron variant. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and we walked and talked for several kilometres at the Second Marsh Wildlife Area on the shore of Lake Ontario. It was a good compromise as we travelled from Toronto and Belleville and we knew this gem of protected land and marsh from years living nearby.
At one point on our December ramble I noted the husks of milkweed pods and recalled the abundance of Monarch butterflies we would see there, especially in the Fall as they stage in large numbers on their almost miraculous migration to Mexico. One evening at another spot along the lakeshore we looked up to see thousands of butterflies roosting in trees before nightfall.
After years of alarming decline along the eastern North America migration route there has been a resurgence in numbers. We have noticed this, and our other daughter who lives on 3+ acres near Peterborough sends us photos of the caterpillars, chrysalises, and emerging butterflies on their property. Municipalities and individuals have been restoring habitat and reducing the use of herbicides to encourage this revival of an extraordinary species.
Two years ago there was grim news from the Western North America route of the almost total disappearance of Monarchs. Was this the end of a unique population? During the past couple of months there have been encouraging reports regarding the 2021 Monarch butterfly census. An article in the Globe and Mail a couple of days ago by Nathan Vanderclippe offers this considerably more hopeful news:
Late last year, volunteers trekked through poison oak and biting ticks to count nearly a quarter of a million monarchs, documenting large clusters from Pacific Grove to Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Orange County.
It’s far from the millions that once wintered in California, but a hundred-fold increase from what was counted in 2020, when dramatically low numbers raised serious questions about the continued viability of butterflies that can occasionally migrate from as far north as the Okanagan Valley.
The bounce back this year offers a “rare ray of hope that the population is more resilient than we thought,” said Emma Pelton, a biologist who is western monarch lead for The Xerces Society, a Portland-based conservation group that has co-ordinated the annual count since 1997.
“These butterflies can do some extraordinary things.”
t's not difficult to descend into full Eyore mode when it comes to the sorry state of the environment and our human capacity for destruction of habitat for all creatures. Yet as Christians we acknowledge God as the Creator of the marvellous -- might we say miraculous -- web of Creation, so we are committed to hope rather than indifference and cynicism and despair.
Butterflies are extraordinary, and Monarchs are, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, hope with wings.
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