A program that helps researchers identify environmental zones that need protection is being carried out by hundreds of volunteers from Canada.
Canadian conservationists often take a magnifying lens and a notebook with them when they go out looking for monarch eggs. Volunteers are taking part in the summer census of endangered butterflies.
July and August are the best months for the monarch to be visible in Canada during all stages of development, including eggs, caterpillars, chrysalis, and adult butterflies.
This is also the reproduction period of the generation. The journey will be 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) to Mexico and takes place in just a few weeks.
It's a complicated subject. The monarch only lays one egg per leaf. While the monarch can lay one egg per leaf, there are other insects that can lay as many as a dozen eggs. We are trying to find something small," Jacques Kirouac, one of the hundreds who participate in the citizen science program Mission Monarch, explains.
These eggs are yellow or off-white and approximately the same size as a pinhead. They have ridges running from the tip to their base.
Five years ago, the Montreal Insectarium established this program to document monarch breeding areas to address the species's desperate situation. Researchers use the data to identify zones that need protection. Similar programs are available in the United States.
The Monarchs on the Eastern side of North American continent are in difficult circumstances. Their population has declined by more than 80 percent over the past two decades.
The Monarchs on the eastern side are in difficult circumstances. Their population has declined by more than 80 percent over the past two decades. California's western monarchs, who hibernate in California, are even worse off. In the most recent census by Western Monarch count, fewer than 2000 were reported. This is a drop of 99.9 percent from the 1980s.
Scientists agree that the disappearance of insects is less dramatic and less alarming than the disappearances of large mammals.
They are vital to ecosystems and economies as they pollinate plants and recycle nutrients.
"Not enough data"
It's a beautiful butterfly. Renald Saint Onge, a Mission Monarch volunteer, says that it would be a great loss to lose it.
The 73-year old former ornithologist and carpenter feels the need to "save this butterflies." He decided to allow as many milkweed plants to grow in his garden as possible. This perennial plant, often considered a weed is where the monarch butterfly lays. We find it less often.
Because they pollinate plants and recycle nutrients, monarch butterflies are vital to ecosystems as well as economies.
Alessandro Dieni is the coordinator of Mission Monarch. He says that "natural fields where we had nectar-bearing and milkweed plants are becoming increasingly rare." The plants are also "lower quality" because there are monocultures all over the country and a heavy use of pesticides.
Mexico's forests, where monarchs spend winter, have also been destroyed by logging.
The Canadian government is taking action to help the monarch, after witnessing the devastating decline of the insect. Dieni says that there wasn't enough data available in Canada to determine where to send the necessary information to save the monarch.
The decline in insects, which make up two-thirds all terrestrial species, began at the start of the 20th century. It accelerated between 1950-60 and reached alarming levels over the past 20 years.
Marian MacNair, McGill University, explains that "thanks to the censuses we can now conduct more precise research."
"This allows us better determine the routes taken and the conditions that monarch particularly like," says the biologist, who is amazed at the small, emblematic butterfly’s ability to fly thousands upon thousands of kilometers.
Scientists find the monarch butterfly a useful study because it often presents "great difficulty" in studying the evolution of insect populations. MacNair explains that the monarch's territory can be quite small, so it is simple to make calculations and observe the situation and document the "death of the species".
2021 AFP
