We must ask: how can we create more and better crossings? Instead of more fragmentation and boundaries (around countries, parks and people), what monarchs need to survive is for us to emulate their “crossing” behaviour. Monarchs’ migrating behaviour entails crossing nature and human-made barriers despite the added difficulties of this journey. Meanwhile, agribusiness, which is both a push and pull factor in the precarious migration of Mexican farmers, has also displaced the milkweed in what is known as the Canadian and U.S. This is seen in monocrop agriculture, which has displaced Indigenous people and destroyed habitats for monarchs and other pollinators by changing the native landscape. The fates of marginalized residents are closely tied to those of the monarch. Monarchs live in an unequal North America - a region that is integrated economically and geographically, but marked by inequality based on race, class and citizenship. (USFWS Midwest Region/flickr) Monocrop displaces milkweed and monarchs For example, a butterfly enthusiast can freely collect and rear monarchs in captivity in most of the U.S., but not in Ontario.Ī map of North America showing the migration patterns of the monarch butterfly. These protective measures keep changing and political and economic motivations can take precedence over the genuine need to care for monarch habitat trans-nationally. In Canada, monarchs are listed as endangered but protected differently across provinces and in the United States, monarchs are still not listed as endangered. Monarchs are protected when they spend the winter in the cool and humid forests of central Mexico, but the migratory route is still not fully integrated into the conservation plan. The U.S., Canada and Mexico have different environmental laws and political priorities.

Monarchs are negatively affected by national borders. Creating this National Park entailed evicting the Caldwell First Nation from their ancestral land. In Canada, the emblematic Point Pelee National Park that hosts monarchs at their fall migration also substituted monarch habitat with wooded areas that are not suitable for monarchs. In Mexico, forest extensions that used to be community commons (later a Biosphere Reserve to protect monarchs) have been converted into avocado plantations. And we need to unite to truly protect them.Ĭanada’s Point Pelee National Park, which is seen as a Carolinian forest, was originally home to the Savanna habitat that monarchs need. What is at risk of disappearing with them, I argue, is the wonder of a natural connector. I document how monarchs are natural crossers, uniting people, fields of expertise and countries. Why? Part of the answer lies in our misguided approach to protecting them.Īs a social anthropologist, I have followed this butterfly across North America over the past decade. And it has developed, over millennia, these movements in a delicate relationship with its milkweed host plant.ĭespite their remarkable adaptations and ongoing conservation efforts, things have gone downhill for these monarchs.

It can survive harsh weather during its long-distance flights across Canada, the U.S. This tiny, almost weightless, butterfly can travel thousands of kilometres across natural and human-made borders with ease. The compounding effects of habitat degradation, insufficient food and water and climate change have led to these dwindling numbers.

The iconic North American monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus plexippus was recently listed in the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, signalling that its ongoing decline could lead to extinction.

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