This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of July 5, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Summer is well established in Quebec, but many monarch lovers have noticed that the butterflies were less numerous this year. Should we be worried about it?
Coordinator of the Monarch Mission project at the Institute for Research in Plant Biology (IRBV), Alessandro Dieni recognizes that, in the field, eggs, caterpillars and adult monarch butterflies are becoming rarer. When The duty contacted him on Monday, Mr. Dieni was in Abitibi. “Last year, at this time, we saw many more adults flying in the sites visited and many more caterpillars on the plants,” he says.
But it’s too early to worry, he said. Last winter, monarchs covered an area in Mexico 35% larger than the previous year, an encouraging sign for entomologists. It is not known, however, how their migration through the United States took place. The winds and the loss of habitats can in particular modify their progression, explains the researcher. Their migration corridors may also vary from year to year. Sometimes they arrive in New Brunswick first. Other times, they reach southern Quebec first. “It’s always scary when, at the start of the season, you see very little of it, but there are a lot of factors that you have to take into consideration. There may just be a lag of a few weeks,” he says, preaching patience.
The researcher also encourages amateurs to still inspect the milkweeds and to send their observations to the Mission Monarque program even if they see no eggs, no caterpillars or no adult butterflies. It is important for researchers to have the most accurate portrait possible of the situation on the ground, he argues.
This year, the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz will take place from July 29 to August 7, but amateurs can, throughout the summer, take part in Mission Monarch, a program led by the IRBV and the Montreal Insectarium.
Remember that this emblematic butterfly is endangered and that its population has dropped by 90% in 20 years. One of its habitats has just been altered on the island of Montreal, after the mowing of the monarch butterfly field carried out by Aéroports de Montréal two weeks ago.