Book Review: ‘The Last Monarch Butterfly’ by Phil Schappert
The Monarch is the most recognized butterfly in North America – practically everyone, young and not-so-young, has seen the large, bright orange-winged creatures flitting about at one time or another. They are a beautiful sight, and most people feel cheered for having seen one and recognized a beautiful part of nature..and fragile, too, for the Monarch, for all its multitudes, is an endangered species.
“While a plethora of books, articles and papers have been written about Monarch butterfly migration and the need to protect this endangered phenomena, most – if not all – of them have focused on the overwintering roost sites in Mexico and California and virtually ignore what might be going on in the breeding range…
“Yes, the survival of Monarch butterflies at the winter roosts impacts the potential size of the breeding population in any given year, but the reproductive success or failure of the subsequent generations of non-migrants also has dramatic effects on the number of butterflies that make it t the winter roosts. My central thesis is that you can’t save one without the other.”
Phil Schappert, a biologist specializing in butterflies, teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, and indeed this oversized paperback reads like a textbook, for all that it’s gorgeously illustrated with full-color photos of Monarchs, from the very beginning: a Monarch egg, to caterpillar, to pupation, to a beautiful green chrysalis with metallic gold spots, to their emergence as wet-winged butterflies, to their roosting by the thousands in trees for months at a time, to their migrations across country to the beautiful – and endangered – jungles of Mexico.
But despite its scholarly tone (and larding of technical jargon) this is a good read. Schappert divides the book into five parts, and for each part writes a vignette of his own experiences. The first two recount his journey to Sierra Chinua, Mexico, to see for himself the spectacular “living cathedrals” of millions of Monarchs hanging from fir trees, “like so many Autumn leaves.”
Less than a week after he returns home from the trip, the location he had visited had been decimated…not by man this time, but by a severe winter storm. Next he visits Charles Sauriol Conservation Reserve in Toronto’s East Don River Valley, and registers his dismay at the changes wrought in only eight years. “What had once been a thriving, diverse ecosystem that sustained more than 35 or so species of butterflies was now choking, overflowing with an alien invader, the aptly named “dog-strangling vine” or black swallowwort..Appropriate to its name, the swallowwort had taken over and had nearly swallowed the entire meadow whole.”
Schappert ends his vignettes at the beginning, with his first trip to Point Pelee National Park, in southwestern Ontario, where he’d gone with his wife to do some birding, and yet became fascinated with the activities of hundreds of Monarch butterflies, that they found there, and their ‘odd’ behavior, until an enthusiast explained to them what was happening. “Of course, the solution to the mystery and our observations and thoughts about what we had seen that day only raised more questions, but it was those questions and that experience that have led directly to the book you hold in your hand.”
Table of contents:
1. The King of North America – All about the unusual Monarch butterfly, as well as other milk weed butterflies. The life cycle, from eggs, to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult (otherwise known as an imago, for those who like to learn at least one new word a day…this book will set you up for a year!)
2. Living Cathedrals – The overwintering roosts or colonies in the states of Michoacan and Mexico. Their importance, and what is threatening them. It wasn’t until 1976 that the world learned the answer to the riddle of where the Monarchs migrated to in winter. The Mexican government has decreed that five of the known over-wintering sites be protected, but they are still in danger as the demands of the human population are encroaching on the reserves, just as happens in the United States.
3) North By Northwest – The incredible migration of the Monarchs – over 2,000 miles, and that’s only if they flew in a straight line…which they don’t. The danger of loss of habitat on their journey. The adult Monarchs can sup on the nectar of many flowering plants – but the eggs must be laid on a milkweed plant, for that is what the caterpillars eat, and the milk of the milkweed serves many purposes in the growth of the caterpillar into a Monarch.
4) Living In America – More information on environmental concerns, the destruction caused by man, the destruction caused by other predators, parasites and pathogens, herbicides and pesticides, and their impact.
5) South by Southwest – The Monarch’s return journey!
Finally, Schappert ends with a page on what the reader can do to help the Monarchs. “Don’t sit back in your easy chair and depend on others to protect the Monarchs in your backyard. Get involved…”
Get involved with local butterfly clubs, encourage your local, regional, state and national legislators and officials to “do the right thing” wherever and whenever humanly possible. Work to protect known roost sites, and on a smaller scale add some milkweed species and favorite Monarch nectar wildflowers to your garden.
Conclusion
According to Lincoln Brower, “acknowledged to be one of the leading Monarch researchers in the world,” the North American Monarch has a poor chance of surviving through the next 20 years. Can mankind help, when mankind itself seems to have just as poor of a chance? The needs of an inexorably expanding population around the world is causing the destruction of more and more wildlife. Is it necessary to destroy so much? That’s a larger question that Schappert doesn’t address here, but this book is a microcosm of that larger problem.
