Pixiq

The Eighth Wonder of the World

The amazing story of the annual migration of monarch butterflies from eastern Canada to central Mexico is now well known, but forty years ago, it was a mystery. Unraveling that mystery has been the life’s work of two great entomologists, the Canadian Fred Urquhart and the American Lincoln Brower. Their story is a classic illustration of the way a few individuals can challenge the destructive course of mankind by understanding the complex course of nature.

At the far northern point of the circular migration of monarchs, imagine scientists in Toronto tagging tens of thousands of individual butterflies and organizing a network of volunteers to track them through their route, all before the days of the Internet. At the southern point, imagine isolated campesinos (subsistence farmers) for whom the annual fall arrival of the monarchs—and the blanketing of nearby forests by butterflies—is a part of local legend and culture: the return of the souls of their ancestors, coinciding approximately with the Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). Even Mexican naturalists were unaware of the butterflies’ annual sojourn in the mountains of Michoacán until the Canadian researchers located the overwintering sites in 1975, following four decades of research. Readying the work for publication in National Geographic, they kept the locations secret.

Meanwhile, Brower had been working in Florida, studying the co-evolution of the monarchs and milkweed, the butterflies’ primary food source and an essential element in both reproduction and migration. He and his collaborators deduced the location of potential overwintering sites and discovered the monarch’s Chincua colony. In December 1976, I joined Brower as the photographer for his American team of researchers, and we drove into the mountains to the site, where Urquhart’s team was tagging monarchs. The situation was a bit tense, and the encounter between the two scientists became a well-publicized international incident. I just wanted to take photographs, and from my perspective, there were plenty of monarchs for everyone.

There were, in fact, hundreds of millions of butterflies.

My first reaction was to simply sit and watch. The boughs of the giant oyamel fir trees sagged with the weight of the insects that clung to every centimeter of bark, every needle. When a cloud covered the sun, the monarchs clustered together, wings closed tightly, unmoving. When sunlight hit them, they became animated, swarming like bright leaves against the blue sky, and their scales fell like sequins through the air. I looked around in amazement and wondered where to start my photography. It was an opportunity and a responsibility of enormous magnitude.

I made three trips to the monarch overwintering sites with Lincoln Brower and his colleague Bill Calvert in the late 1970s, and my photographs appeared in many scientific and popular publications, including the cover of Natural History magazine. In the early 80s, some of my monarch images were used to represent the University of California’s bi-national institute for research on Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS). The monarchs were seen as a natural treasure that both countries shared and an important opportunity for collaboration between U.S. and Mexican scientists. But more important than those and subsequent publications was the fact that the images supported Brower’s efforts over the next decades to protect the monarch forests from logging, a complex issue because the residents of the area depended on the trees for firewood and income. Eventually, the Mexican government extended protection to large portions of the forests by establishing the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and encouraging ecotourism. But due to conflicts in land-use priorities, some areas have been deforested nonetheless.

Mexico is not alone in its responsibility for the monarch migration, which Brower once named “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” Brower has since identified the full circle of the monarchs’ annual migratory pattern, which involves four generations of butterflies and spans three nations. He has also documented the need to maintain the milkweed populations required for food and reproduction throughout the spring and summer portion of the cycle. In the United States and Canada, many natural stands of milkweed have been replaced by genetically engineered soybean and corn agriculture, restricting the monarchs’ migration routes. Resolving the challenges affecting the ancient migration of the monarchs requires the commitment of all three of the countries involved.

In 2008, Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve—consisting of more than 56,000 hectares (138,379 acres) of the monarch overwintering area—was named a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In its findings, UNESCO cited the concentration as “the most dramatic manifestation of the phenomenon of insect migration” in the world. Indeed, the whole world is watching as the monarchs’ story continues to unfold.

TIP: Approach every photographic project as if it might be the one that defines you or the one that may define a critical environmental issue of our time.