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 Imagine walking into a wooded area under tree branches completely covered with a seemingly infinite number of beautiful, orange-and-black Monarch butteries. As the morning sun hits the trees, the butterflies wake up, and the peaceful silence is filled with the flapping of their wings.
“My most memorable experience was standing under the trees with thousands of butterflies flying overhead,” says Katie England, a graduate student in entomology who took part in a study abroad trip to visit Monarch butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico. “You could literally hear the beating of their wings.”
This past semester break, a group of Purdue University graduate and undergraduate students and faculty made the sojourn to the butterflies’ migratory homeland.
Each year, an estimated 150 million Monarch butterflies migrate from the United States to Mexico. How the butterflies know to relocate to these areas is not understood, but the specific environment provides the right climate for them to survive. The adult Monarch spends November through March inhabiting a specific fir tree species found on the mountaintops in several Mexican states.
In the small town of Angangueo, students learned how the migration affects local residents. The boost in tourism has been a welcome source of income, but the trees that house the Monarchs are also valued for lumber to build homes and for firewood. However, organizations are working to find alternatives to using the trees that the Monarchs inhabit.
“This was probably the most eye-opening part of the trip,” England says. “We learned that there is an intricate weaving of sociology, anthropology, psychology and ecology all tied together when it comes to preserving the Monarch’s habitats.”
The course was administered through International Programs in Agriculture.
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