Spreading their Wings: Fred and Norah Urquhart’s Search for the Monarch Butterfly Wintering Ground1/18/2018
Every summer, monarch butterflies fill Canadian skies, dancing from flower to flower. They offer us inspiration, nostalgia for childhood, and visual reminders of nature's beauty. For these reasons, and many others, they have always been of interest to Canadians. In a 1906 Globe and Mail Article an unknown author exclaims:
Who does not know the Monarch, with his great, bright, reddish wings, bordered and veined with black, and decorated with two rows of white spots.[1]
Apart from their striking appearance, much about monarchs' lives remained a mystery, especially their migratory patterns. At the turn of the century people speculated about this phenomenon, wondering where monarchs went during the winter months. In 1916 another author posited they must winter in a warmer climate, stating:
For the first time during a ten years' residence in Canada I saw the trek or migration of the "Monarch" butterflies (Ansola plexippus) to a warmer climate...when one thinks it over one cannot help marvelling that the migratory insect should be so strongly developed in such an apparently frivolous race as the butterfly.[2]
Seven years later another author speculated that monarchs seemed to travel from the south during the springtime, explaining that:
From June until October one may often see the Monarch butterfly flitting about over fields and meadows...these butterflies come from the South in the spring or early summer.[3]
These statements show that people at the beginning of the twentieth century understood that monarchs were indeed migratory insects and that they flew south for the winter. But where did they go? Dr. Fred Urquhart wanted to find out the answer.
Dr. Fred and Norah Urquhart
Like many Canadian children, Fred Urquhart loved catching butterflies. The difference between Urquhart and other children, though, was that his childhood activity turned into his lifelong work and passion--finding monarch butterflies' wintering spot. "I've always been hot on butterflies" he said in a 1976 Globe and Mail article, stating that: As a kid I spent my summers bumbling around with a butterfly net. There was a man in our town who had a large butterfly collection and when I wasn't chasing butterflies, I was pouring over his books. One day I read about the monarch, about how no one knew where it wintered. That got me going. I had planned to be a musician. Instead I became an entomologist.[4]
Fred became the Head of the Life Sciences Division and Curator of Invertebrates at the Royal Ontario Museum. He also taught Zoology at the University of Toronto. During the late 1930s he began trying to figure out where monarch butterflies overwintered.
But how does one track monarchs? Tagging their wings seemed to be the answer. It took Dr. Urquhart five years to develop a tag that could be adhered to monarchs' fragile wings. He "tried everything," stating that he tried: painting the wings, punching holes in the wings, even glueing on tags: but nothing seemed to work. With the gluepot we just ended up with a sticky mess of butterflies glued together.[5]
When he painted the wings he commented that, "it just looked like they had flown into a freshly painted fence" and that he "quickly scratched that approach."[6] By 1940 he started to use paper stickers that worked as long as a patch of scales on the wings were scraped off.[7]
Just before the Second World War began, the research director at the University of Toronto would not let Dr. Urquhart include his project in the annual report "for fear the government would think we were doing nothing but running around chasing butterflies."[8] During the war years, his quest remained on pause, but after the war ended, his search continued. In 1945, he married Norah, a sociologist whom he recruited into his monarch search. At first she wasn't too keen on butterflies, but soon admitted that she had, "grown to love the little things" and that she "might not have found things so easy if they'd been ugly little insects."[9] In 1952 Dr. Urquhart and his wife published an article in Natural History magazine which discussed their tagging problem and asked for volunteers. Letters poured in and the Urquharts began sending volunteers labels which read, "Send to Zoology University Toronto Canada."[10] To study these butterflies, the Urquharts spent a lot of time around sewage disposal plants collecting larvae. These areas were great places to look because monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, which tends to grow in damp places. "People think it's all such pretty work," Dr. Urquhart stated, "I think they have this mental picture of Norah and I perpetually gamboling through the meadows with our butterfly nets looking romantic. What we really do is spend a lot of time in miserable places."[11]
The couple continued to develop new labels. They successfully created one that would stick in any condition. These tags were half an inch (1.27 cm) wide and one inch (2.54cm) long. Half of the tag folded over the leading edge of the front wing and included an address and an individual code.[12] Now that they had better labels, the Urquharts furthered their cause, putting out 3,000 news releases about their project, resulting in many people wanting to help.[13] To trace the migration, Dr. Urquhart said that he got assistance "from about 600 people-high school students, housewives, lawyers, doctors- anyone from age 12 to 84."[14] In 1957 nine-year-old Fred Jacob of Wickford Rhode Island mailed a small package containing a monarch butterfly with a tagged wing to the Urquharts.[15] Lloyd Beamer of Meaford, Ontario, a retired science teacher, was one of Dr. Urquhart's most devoted volunteers in Ontario.
Initially, the couple believed that monarchs wintered in Florida, so they set up several research stations throughout the state. By 1966 this hypothesis resulted in a dead end. "We did get returns" he said, "but there just weren't enough to account for all the migrating butterflies of Eastern Canada and the United States."[16] In 1970 at Norah's urging, Dr. Urquhart wrote an article in a Mexican newspaper, asking naturalists to look for monarchs. Kenneth C. Brugger, an American Engineer stationed in Mexico, responded to the article saying that he had seen a dead monarch on the ground. Dr. Urquhart said: When Mr. Brugger wrote to us that he had seen many dead butterflies along the back roads while travelling in his camper van, I felt certain we were close to a discovery.[17]
At the beginning, Ken did not know much about monarchs. Norah explained that "he kept sending us specimens that didn't remotely resemble the monarch! But we couldn't have had a better research assistant."[18] While Ken got better at identifying the butterfly he married a Mexican woman, Cathy Aguado, who was also a butterfly enthusiast. The couple showed a monarch specimen to local loggers who said they had seen those exact butterflies in the mountains.
On January 9, 1976 Kenneth called the Urquharts' from Mexico, telling them that he and Cathy had found the overwintering colony in the Sierra Madre mountains. He described large masses of monarchs covering evergreen trees in a 20 acre area.[19]Unfortunately, Dr. Urquhart was in the hospital at the time of the discovery and had to wait another year to see this phenomenon for himself. When he made the trip one year later he exclaimed: my heart was pounding so hard we had to stop every few feet and gasp for air. The air was terribly thin and the way in very difficult. We're not young people anymore and I keep thinking 'my God, imagine getting this far and dying before I ever see the things!'[20]
When he did finally see what he had been searching for he beamed, that:
there were probably 30,000 butterflies on every branch. There were so many a branch broke from the weight of them and crashed to the ground as we stood there watching. You couldn't take a step without crushing them. Everywhere, those glowing wings. I felt paralyzed.[21]
Making the story even more amazing, among those that fell from the branch was a butterfly with the label, "Send to Zoology University of Toronto Canada."[22]
One of the monarchs that Karin Davidson-Taylor, Education Program Officer at Royal Botanical Gardens, tagged and released last year. Karin is a member of the Monarch Teacher Network of Canada, an organization of educators and nature enthusiasts who teach people about monarchs through hands-on training and experiences.
Species at Risk
Thanks to Fred and Norah Urquhart and their team of researchers we now know the wintering location of the monarch butterfly; however, this overwintering phenomenon might one day be something of the past, as these butterflies are now a species at risk. Even sadder is that the decline in monarch numbers is not specific to this species. Many other plants, animals, and insects in North America (and the world) are experiencing declining numbers due to the destruction of their habitats. There are several reasons why the monarch is faced with dwindling populations. Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch, a not-for-profit organization based out of the University of Kansas that helps track monarchs, states that a big problem lies with: our insane desire to make everything look like our front lawn and mow and use herbicides along all our roadsides- that has eliminated a lot of monarch habitat.[23]
Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed and many factors have contributed to the elimination of this key piece in the monarch life cycle. For one thing, milkweed is considered a noxious weed in Canada.[24] Farmers and gardeners actively remove it from their properties. Changing farming practices in the United States’ Midwest have also resulted in a large decline of the plant, more specifically in the Corn Belt region where increased cultivation of genetically modified soybeans and corn has greatly impacted milkweed numbers. When these genetically modified crops are planted the fields are sprayed with large amounts of herbicides in order to wipe out other crops. More and more land is being used to grow corn in order to create ethanol, turning once fallow lands - perfect for monarch breeding into highly sprayed croplands.[25] Increased Mexican logging has also led to the destruction of the monarch's overwintering habitats.[26]
All three countries: Canada, the United States, and Mexico are working to ensure that proper conditions are met to make stable milkweed populations, and sufficient breeding grounds.[27] In 2014 the monarchs’ breeding area shrank by 44% from the previous year. “The result is the lowest since conservationists began tracking monarch winter populations…” said Omar Vidal, director of the World Wildlife Fund Mexico. He went on to state that, “if we don’t take immediate actions, we are very close to losing this migratory phenomenon.[28] In 1995 Canada and Mexico formed an agreement to provide more research and better monitoring of the species.[29]
What can you do to help?
One of the easiest ways to help monarchs is to plant milkweed in your backyard. Please check with your local nursery that the plant has not been sprayed with pesticides. If it has, it will kill caterpillar populations. You could also plant nectar-producing plants in your yard, like salvia and mint. Lastly, donate or volunteer with organizations that are working hard to help our little friends. Here are a few good places to start: Monarch Teacher Network of Canada | Journey North | Mission Monarch | Monarch Watch | Save our Monarchs | The Monarch Joint Venture | Live Monarch | The Monarch Foundation | World Wildlife Fund Canada | Monarch Larva Monitoring Project |
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Karin Davidson-Taylor, Education Program Officer at Royal Botanical Gardens for loaning me her personal book on monarchs, providing me with names of organizations, and teaching me about these wonderful insects. Also, thank you too Bill Kilburn from the Back to Nature Network for teaching me to stop and appreciate the natural world, reminding me of how complex and beautiful it really is. And also a big thank you to ProQuest for making digital copies of the Globe and Mail accessible and easy to search for. Last but not least, thanks to Adam Montgomery for proof-reading this post!
[1]Unknown author. A Midsummer Carnival of Butterflies, The Globe, September 15, 1906
[2]Unknown author. The Trek of the Butterflies, The Globe, September 30, 1916 [3]Unknown author. The Monarch Butterfly, The Globe, August 25, 1923 [4]Carson, Susan. The Lost Kingdom of the Monarchs, The Globe and Mail, October 2, 1976 [5]William, Shannon. The Monarch Man Keeps Searching, The Globe and Mail, July 30, 1976 [6]Carson, Susan. The Lost Kingdom of the Monarchs [7]William, Shannon. The Monarch Man Keeps Searching [8]Carson, Susan. The Lost Kingdom of the Monarchs [9]Ibid. [10]Ibid. [11]Ibid. [12]William, Shannon. The Monarch Man Keeps Searching [13]Ibid. [14]Unknown author. Migration Traced: Monarchs Gather for Journey South, The Globe and Mail, September 11, 1973. [15]Unknown author. Tiny Tags Help Trace Butterfly Migrations, The Globe and Mail, August 16, 1957 [16]William, Shannon. The Monarch Man Keeps Searching [17]Ibid. [18]Carson, Susan. The Lost Kingdom of the Monarchs [19]William, Shannon. The Monarch Man Keeps Searching [20]Carson, Susan. The Lost Kingdom of the Monarchs [21]Ibid. [22]Ibid. [23]Hammer, Kate. Flying Alongside a Royal Migration, The Globe and Mail, October 8, 2012 [24]Matas, Robert. "Canada, Mexico to Nurture Butterflies," The Globe and Mail, October 18, 1995. [25]Boychuk, Evelyn. Monarchs' Decline Driven by Milkweed Loss, The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2014 [26]Semeniuk, Ivan. "Monarch Butterfly Numbers Dwindle to Lowest Ever," The Globe and Mail, January 30, 2014. [27]Mittelstaedt, Martin. "Monarch butterflies can’t Get by on a Wing and a Prayer," The Globe and Mail, July 1, 2008. [28]Semeniuk, Ivan. "Monarch Butterfly Numbers Dwindle to Lowest Ever," [29]Matas, Robert. "Canada, Mexico to Nurture Butterflies,"
2 Comments
2/16/2018 11:27:09 am
Hi Stephanie, great article, thanks for sharing and writing this. I work for the Monarch Joint Venture, and I noticed you have our website incorrectly listed in the What You Can Do To Help section. Our website is www.monarchjointventure.org.
Reply
Stephanie Bellissimo
2/16/2018 12:07:39 pm
My apologies, Cora. Thank you for pointing that out. I will update your website information right now to ensure that people get to the right place.
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