The Western monarch butterfly is a magnificent sight to behold — with their rich hues of red, orange, yellow, and gold, they gracefully fly across landscapes to perform their pollination duties. They migrate annually from all over Northern America and instinctively always know when it is time to move. Originating in the American Tropics, this species gradually spread as its primary food source — the milkweed — spread. As the monarchs moved, their migration patterns changed too, becoming the highly sophisticated version it is now. The Monarch butterfly from western parts of the U.S. and Canada moves south — to California — every time winter comes around because it’s better for their survival rates. There they have future Monarchs, who make the trip again the next year.
Scientists didn’t know this pattern earlier, although they had been studying Monarchs since the 1850s. It was only in 1930 that they were able to decipher that these winged wonders flew south for the winter and migrated north in the spring. Then, Canadian zoologist Frederick Urquhart led a team of 3000+ butterfly enthusiasts from North America, assigning them to tag all monarchs across the continent. Using everyone’s data on where and when monarchs appeared, Urquhart noticed they seemed to gradually move south, going from Texas to Northern Mexico. Answers as to where the monarchs went in the winter were still elusive, until 1973. That’s when a businessman named Kenneth Brugger told Urquhart about seeing a ‘shower’ of monarchs rain down from the western mountains in Mexico City during a hail storm. Urquhart recruited Brugger to the monarch butterfly cause, and Brugger and his wife conducted a two-year expedition to find these elusive butterflies that only ended when they stumbled upon the butterflies’ wintering site — a patch of land on the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt.
Finally, the secret monarch butterfly’s migratory path was clear, and more people came to see their beauty in the wild. Given that the migration of the monarchs in such large numbers was a giant attraction (plus, they stay from October through March), the state of California declared February 5 as California Western Monarch Day in 2004. Their main goals were to increase tourism and educate people about this butterfly.
Unfortunately, the Western monarch butterfly has been gradually heading towards borderline extinction. The decline in the number of these species is due to deforestation and the degradation of land, the excessive use of pesticides, climate change, and other factors that may alter migratory patterns — many of these have yet to be explored. Considering their pollination habits and that migration is challenging for the Western monarch butterfly population, it is important to understand what a decline in their numbers really means. The dip in the monarch population is an astonishing 90%. Several conservation groups are researching and working towards protecting the creatures from extinction.
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