OHIO – Have you seen a lot of monarch Butterflies recently? These Butterflies are heading through our area and to Mexico right now.
A phenomenon that occurs every year around September-October is the migration of Monarch Butterflies and Green Dragonflies to the warmer southern regions of the US and Mexico. Like the Canadian Goose, these insects fly over 3,000 miles to survive the winter months before returning in the spring.
These insects though are greeted and celebrated in Mexico on November 1st and 2nd when they arrive from their long trip called the Day of the Dead. In some stories, monarchs are the returning souls of loved ones.
Unlike the Canadian goose both the Monarch butterflies and the Dragonflies don’t do this with just one life, but they lay eggs, and the next generations complete the lifecycles returning in May to our Area.
In 2022 the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the species endangered comes as years of habitat destruction and rising temperatures have decimated the fluttering orange itinerants’ population.
The Endangered migratory monarch butterfly is a subspecies of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). The native population, known for its migrations from Mexico and California in the winter to summer breeding grounds throughout the United States and Canada, has shrunk by between 22% and 72% over the past decade. Legal and illegal logging and deforestation to make space for agriculture and urban development has already destroyed substantial areas of the butterflies’ winter shelter in Mexico and California, while pesticides and herbicides used in intensive agriculture across the range kill butterflies and milkweed, the host plant that the larvae of the monarch butterfly feed on.
