It's Christmas Eve, after the first real blizzard in Northeast South Dakota. The day was clear, sunlit and cold.
It would seem to violate the spirit not only of the calendar but the day to write of political mischief, and so we share a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a canticle to the great Monarch butterfly. Bob Timmons reports in the Outdoors section article, Discovered butterfly tag in Mexico represents monarchs' tale of survival:
Their existence threatened, monarch butterflies didn't receive the protection hoped for under the Endangered Species List in an announcement last week. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said Dec. 15 that while a listing was warranted, there were "higher priority" species in need.
While the news no doubt disappointed many supporters of monarchs, a report from Austin, Minn., was a reminder of a truth: The regal beauties are resilient like few other things in the wild.
On Aug. 26, a local boy placed a small, adhesive tag on a monarch — a tracker of sorts — during a program at Jay C. Hormel Center and sent it on its way. Eighty-seven days and more than 2,000 miles later, the tag was recovered in the butterflies' winter grounds in central Mexico. The monarch had landed.
It's not the first time evidence of a butterfly in Minnesota has materialized south of the border. But the discovery still stands as a minor miracle given what the pollinators are up against.
Already a species whose habitat of native flowering plants is under threat, they migrate south by the millions every fall from the United States and Canada. There are risks of harsh weather and predators, too. It's estimated only 30% to 70% survive the long miles south.
The Minnesota-to-Mexico connection started when Hunter Peters, 11, placed tag "ABUL 048" on a male's wing, one of more than 50 monarchs tagged that day at the center, said director Luke Reese. They were among more than 400 captured, tagged and released there in August and September. The tags came from Monarch Watch, a conservation organization that distributes more than a quarter of a million every fall and tracks their recovery.
Word came of ABUL 048 on Nov. 22 via Facebook. Ellen Sharp, the co-founder of Butterflies & Their People, reported that one of her nonprofit's "forest guardians," Francisco Moreno Hernandez, had found the tag on a leaf Nov. 21, no butterfly in sight. Sharp reached out to Monarch Watch, which tracked ABUL 048 to its Minnesota origins.
ABUL 048 was the first tag of the season found in the 8,000-acre Cerro Pelon sanctuary, said Sharp, whose conservation work is anchored there. Remote and rugged amid fir, cedar and pine, Cerro Pelon is one of several butterfly sanctuaries in Michoacán and Mexico, two bordering states where the butterflies colonize. She employs six forest guardians who live in the area, in her mission to support them and the marvels in the air. Monarch Watch provides incentive, too, paying $5 for every recovered tag, money that stretches far in the region. Monarch Watch has reported 323 tags recovered so far in 2020. . . .
Hunter, the young tagger, might believe in miracles now. He said he had so much fun tagging monarchs earlier that he returned Aug. 26, with his grandmother Verna Heuertz. He said he tagged multiple ones that day, ABUL 048 among them, while his grandmother recorded data.
He was happy to hear that his butterfly had survived the trip. "I was very excited when I first found it. I knew they went. I didn't know that they went that far in that amount of time," Hunter said.
Reese said tags placed at the center have surfaced before in Mexico, but this year's news was extra rewarding.
"In 2020, when things are so negative, knowing about this put a smile on my face," he said.
We hope for solid policy that protects milkweed for the monarchs--and policy that dampens the use of systemic neonicotinoid insecticides that kills monarchs and other living things.
A brief google search tells us that while butterflies aren't explicitly mentioned in Scripture, Christians connect the species' transformation from caterpillar to butterfly with Christ's transformation.
Yet the monarch naming wasn't part of that cosmos. Wikipedia notes:
The monarch was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae of 1758 and placed in the genus Papilio.[12] In 1780, Jan Krzysztof Kluk used the monarch as the type species for a new genus, Danaus.
And that name came from Greek mythology:
In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, at the bottom of page 467,[14] Linnaeus wrote that the names of the Danai festivi, the division of the genus to which Papilio plexippus belonged, were derived from the sons of Aegyptus. Linnaeus divided his large genus Papilio, containing all known butterfly species, into what we would now call subgenera. The Danai festivi formed one of the "subgenera", containing colorful species, as opposed to the Danai candidi, containing species with bright white wings. Linnaeus wrote: "Danaorum Candidorum nomina a filiabus Danai Aegypti, Festivorum a filiis mutuatus sunt." (English: "The names of the Danai candidi have been derived from the daughters of Danaus, those of the Danai festivi from the sons of Aegyptus.")
Robert Michael Pyle suggested Danaus is a masculinized version of Danaë (Greek Δανάη), Danaus's great-great-granddaughter, to whom Zeus came as a shower of gold, which seemed to him a more appropriate source for the name of this butterfly.[15]
Despite that history, tonight, as we wait for heaven and nature to sing in the memory of the birth of Jesus in a humble manger, we'll hold that tag as a small spot of hope for the monarch.
Related posts:
- LCCMR funded scholars studied the impact of neonicotinoids on surface and groundwater
- MPR: More buzz about scholars' discovery that neonicotinoids widespread in MN lakes & rivers
Photo: "The meadow in Cerro Pelon last season, when it was full of monarchs and visitors. The monarchs cluster in the dense forest above the meadow and fly down to it on warm days to drink water and nectar." Photo from Butterflies and Their People Photos, via the Star Tribune.
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email [email protected] as recipient.
Venmo contributions: @Sally-Sorensen-6
Comments