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The first of more than two dozen endangered monarch butterflies tagged with toothpick-sized radio trackers this summer has made it to Mexico to overwinter, a mere five weeks after fluttering off from Winnipeg.
A butterfly with the decidedly sciency-sounding moniker “MB26011” accomplished the physical feat Tuesday, when she crossed the northern Mexico border, dodging predators and vehicle collisions during the perilous five-week migration.
“She’s done about 2,300 kilometres in about 40 days. It’s really incredible,” said Laura Burns, the conservation program manager at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg.
“I think it’s one of the most incredible migration stories in the animal kingdom. That’s why people are so enamoured with monarchs, because it’s a truly remarkable feat that they accomplish.”
Laura Burns, conservation programs manager at the Assiniboine Park Zoo, sits on a butterfly bench at the zoo’s pollinator garden on Thursday. She hopes the data researchers glean from the trackers helps them identify key stopover spots so they can better protect those areas. (Bryce Hoye/CBC)
Burns worked along with Environment and Climate Change Canada researchers and staff at the Living Prairie Museum — a tall-grass prairie preserve in Winnipeg — to tag 29 monarch butterflies there from Aug. 26-27.
The Manitoba effort, spearheaded by Environment Canada, marked the first time monarchs were tagged west of Ontario.
As they bopped from flower to flower over two days, the team nabbed the butterflies with nets and then — very gingerly — pinned them down, dabbed them with eyelash glue, stuck the solar-powered radio tags on and set them free.
Conservation researchers and members of the public have been tracking their movements on the Project Monarch app ever since. The trackers ping as the monarchs fly by radio telemetry towers between Canada and Mexico.
The first of 29 monarch butterflies tagged in Manitoba at the end of August crossed the Mexico border this week — but not all have been so lucky.
At least three of the 29 Manitoba monarchs appear not to have made it out of the province. Their tags fell off or otherwise stopped sending signals.
Those casualties may tell researchers something about the myriad threats the delicate butterflies face. Monarchs were listed as endangered in Canada a few years ago under the federal Species at Risk Act, largely due to habitat destruction associated with agriculture and other human activity.
Several other butterflies still on the wing appear to show just how gritty the showy creatures can be.
For MB26011 to make it into Mexico, she would’ve also had to have gotten a little lucky.
“Not only is it a really far distance, and she needs the energy to fly that far, the weather would’ve had to have been on her side as well,” said Burns.
“Then you factor in other conservation concerns like big agricultural fields or cities, cars, predators…. It’s really remarkable not only that she went so far, but that she managed to navigate all of those obstacles.”
A monarch caterpillar chows down on swamp milkweed leaves at the Living Prairie Museum in August. (Bryce Hoye/CBC)
While MB26011 has made it across two borders already, she still has a few hundred kilometres to go until she reaches the oyamel fir forests in central Mexico, where she’ll meet up with scores more of her kind.
Once there, she’ll have a few good bacchanalian months breeding with the rest, then die. Come spring, the next generations will do the pilgrimage she did in reverse, and arrive back on the Canadian Prairies.
But that long winter resting, suckling on sweet flowers and mating isn’t yet guaranteed for the rest of the Manitoba 29.
Data from Project Monarch and Environment and Climate Change Canada shows the migration path of two of the 29 butterflies tagged in Manitoba — Eddie, who was southwest of Kansas City as of Thursday, and MB26011, who made it to Mexico on Tuesday. (CBC News Graphics)
Eddie, one of the butterflies CBC News documented being tagged and released in August, was just southwest of Kansas City as of Thursday. He has another 1,700 kilometres or more to go.
Burns hopes the data gleaned from the trackers helps Canadian researchers identify key stopover spots along the migration pathway, so that they can collaborate with experts in other jurisdictions to better protect those areas moving forward.
