Blue Planet, Green Ideas | Saving Butterflies, One at a Time

Quebec was still snowy when a monarch butterfly patroller from Saint-Constant, Denis Fortier, contacted The Press to invite him to follow their arrival. A report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had just revealed, in February 2024, that their migration between Canada and Mexico had fallen by 59% compared to the winter of 2023. One wonders if the situation has reached a point of no return, asked the volunteer patroller.

“For two years, I have noticed their decline. They arrive around July instead of mid-June and there are fewer of them,” he wrote.

The surveillance challenge had just been launched.

For four months, The Press followed the monarchs’ migration using a map that charted their northward ascent. By the end of June, there was still not a single butterfly wing in southern Quebec. Then came Canada Day. On a trip along the Lachine Canal, it appeared, sparkling, with its orange wings edged in black. It was foraging from one shrub to another.

“They’re coming to town, you were lucky to see one,” says Denis Fortier, before setting up an appointment to discover his yard, his garden. A true sanctuary for the preservation of monarch butterflies. The man is one of 187 members of the David Suzuki Foundation’s monarch butterfly patrol in Quebec. Across Canada, there are 1,800 patrollers like him. In his yard, he maintains nectar plants and milkweed, the monarch’s host plant.

Passionate since the 1980s, Mr. Fortier explains that the plant is the only one on which the monarch lays its eggs. “The female lays her eggs under the leaf and a small caterpillar emerges after a few days. It devours its shell and the leaf. After about two weeks, a magnificent monarch emerges from a chrysalis,” he explains, pointing to leaves.

Maxim Larrivée is director of the Montreal Insectarium and founder of the Mission Monarch science program. He confirms that our monarchs (Danaus plexippus) are fewer in number, that they are making a late entry into Quebec. Beyond climate change and pesticides, he explains that their breeding habitat has been razed by man, particularly on the edge of agricultural land and monocultures.

“In Abitibi, monarchs have been observed along the railway where there are native plants. The remedy for eco-anxiety is to contribute by creating habitat,” says the scientist and senior executive.

Meanwhile, in the borough of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, at the corner of Saint-Zotique and des Écores, a monarch butterfly appears in the middle of a discussion with Alexandre Huet, head of mobilization and public engagement in Quebec for the David Suzuki Foundation. Since the creation of the monarch patrol in 2017, volunteers across the country have planted more than 100,000 wildflowers and created 7,000 habitat gardens for their reproduction.

“At the Foundation, we want to relaunch a call for action. We would like to triple our number of patrollers. Even a small planter of a native species can make a difference in saving the species. We need to change our habits, particularly with our lawns and the use of pesticides. Citizens can put pressure on their neighborhood elected officials.”

In Quebec, about a hundred cities and municipalities have obtained “monarch-friendly” certification from the Foundation. To obtain it, changes in regulations must be adopted to promote honey-producing plants, particularly milkweed. Habitats must be created in parks. And the general public must be made aware of the usefulness of milkweed. In Saint-Constant, patrol officer Denis Fortier managed to convince elected officials to set up a butterfly garden on a vacant lot.

In Montreal, libraries distributed several thousand packets of seeds in the spring. Under pressure from citizens, an agreement was reached between Boucherville and the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable (MTQ) to no longer cut down native plants, from May to September, within an access ramp to Highway 132 leading to Marie-Victorin Boulevard. Finally, the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz will return, from July 29 to August 4, during which the North American population is invited to locate milkweed plants, look for eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies.

A story that ends well; on July 8, Mr. Fortier wrote to The Press to say that he had just photographed his first monarch of the season in his milkweed garden.

View a map of monarch butterfly migration

Visit the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterfly Effect Project website

Visit the Monarch Mission page of the Insecatrium of Montreal

Visit the David Suzuki Foundation’s Monarch Friend Certification page