Letter from Ellen Sharp: Colonies Consolidating Into One
Published: 12/15/2021
Dear Butterfly People,
Season’s greetings from Macheros. I haven’t visited the monarch butterfly colony for a while, but Ranger Pato sends these observations from the mountain: what started off as three separate colonies is now consolidating into a large one in El Capulin on the Michoacan side of the sanctuary. Butterflies cover an estimated 125 trees. Despite the presence of the colony, logging continues in the vicinity, with four more trees felled in the past month. It’s no surprise—people need money for the holiday season.
While I haven’t seen the butterflies in person of late, Ana and I have spent all day every day for the past few weeks editing videos of them for Adopt a Colony, our online pandemic survival project. We’re especially pleased with our latest featured video, a reenactment of visiting the El Capulin colony with her mother, my mother-in-law, Rosa. As part of the piece, we interviewed Rosa repeatedly about her evolving relationship with the butterflies.
She told us that as a kid she never went to see the colony. It wasn’t until her husband got a job as a forest ranger that she got interested in the migration. He came home with stories of massive amounts of butterflies, describing clusters that weighed so much that branches broke and crashed to the ground.
“I didn’t believe him,” she said. “How is that possible when butterflies are so light weight?”
She had to go see for herself. And what she saw surprised and delighted her: “All those trees upholstered with butterflies!” After that, she went to visit the monarchs whenever she could, deeming the experience, “therapeutic.”
In the clip from this longer piece that we’re sharing with you this week, there’s so much more story behind the story that Rosa tells about her father. She describes him as a man who knew about the presence of the butterfly colony before their discovery but thought nothing of it. “Who knew this would capture people’s attention?” he asked. Apart from bewilderment behind these words, there’s also opposition to the changes brought on the butterflies, a position that’s behind the closure of the Cerro Pelon sanctuary to the public this season. Adopt a Colony explores these histories and their implications for monarch conservation in more depth.
Saludos desde Macheros,
Ellen
