Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I
Speaker 1: know I have told this story on the show before.
Speaker 1: I think it was on a behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I used to write pamphlets
Speaker 1: about science and nature and leave them around the house
Speaker 1: because I thought my family needed to be educated. Those
Speaker 1: are all sourced from our nineteen seventy six editions of
Speaker 1: the world book Encyclopedia Um. Listen. We could talk about
Speaker 1: what a conceited little child I was, but that's a
Speaker 1: different story. But I will tell you that butterflies got
Speaker 1: a lot of coverage in those missives. It was actually
Speaker 1: one of the few topics that got multiple pamphlets written
Speaker 1: about them. It was pretty much like butterflies, fox Is
Speaker 1: and astronomy, where the big repeat items. But most of
Speaker 1: the time it was just a little and when I
Speaker 1: say pamphlets, I mean like a little two pages stapled
Speaker 1: and folded together and everything written in pencil. Like I
Speaker 1: really thought my family was going to study this ridiculous
Speaker 1: business written by like a snooty seven year old but
Speaker 1: in any case, monarchs were a very big favorite, like
Speaker 1: they are for many many kids. We talked about that
Speaker 1: a little bit on the behind the scenes as well.
Speaker 1: We are still those sitting sort of smack dab in
Speaker 1: the middle of the history of monarchs as we know it,
Speaker 1: and the next chapter of that history is really going
Speaker 1: to be up to humans. So I thought we would
Speaker 1: talk today about what we know about these very beautiful
Speaker 1: and flashy insects that are also common enough that most
Speaker 1: of us have familiarity with them if we grew up
Speaker 1: in North America. Talk about how we came to know,
Speaker 1: what we do know about them, and what we're still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, as well as what parts of
Speaker 1: the story have kind of been misrepresented over the years.
Speaker 1: So the monarch butterfly is probably the most widely recognized
Speaker 1: butterfly in the world. I would say definitely in the US.
Speaker 1: Just hearing the common name, most people can immediately picture it.
Speaker 1: And just in case you can't, this species has bright
Speaker 1: orange wings with black veins and black borders. Those butterflies
Speaker 1: scientific name is then OUs plexipus. It's a milkweed butterfly,
Speaker 1: meaning that it's in the subfamily dana a within the
Speaker 1: family Nymphalidae. We'll talk a little bit about that nomenclature
Speaker 1: in a little bit, but we mentioned milkweat there, and
Speaker 1: that's the primary diet of monarch butterflies, which is unique
Speaker 1: because milkwheat is toxic. It's just about everything else, including humans,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of how monarchs have survived so well
Speaker 1: for so long. They really don't have competition for food source.
Speaker 1: But it also has made them very welcome visitors for
Speaker 1: people who keep livestock. For example, because milkweed is poisonous
Speaker 1: to other animals, a healthy monarch population that can keep
Speaker 1: the plants growth in check reduces dangers to grazing herds.
Speaker 1: When we say poisonous, it's probably not going to kill
Speaker 1: any other animal, but it will make them very ill.
Speaker 1: Adult monarchs will also feed on other flowering plants as
Speaker 1: well as milkweed. Monarchs lay their eggs on the milkweed,
Speaker 1: and then those eggs hatch and the caterpillars are sitting
Speaker 1: right on their food. They eat their little egg first,
Speaker 1: and then they only eat the milkweed. They retain that
Speaker 1: plant's toxin in their bodies. This makes the caterpillars toxic
Speaker 1: to predators, although through the glycosides that they addressed, and
Speaker 1: this toxicity stays with the monarch through the pupa stage
Speaker 1: and into adulthood. So this probably won't kill a bird,
Speaker 1: but we'll make it sick if the bird eats the monarch.
Speaker 1: So most birds learn pretty quickly not to mess with them.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned the egg and caterpillar stages of the
Speaker 1: monarch's life cycle, but here's a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1: While the courtship between male and female butterflies of this
Speaker 1: species happens largely in the air, the actual meeting and
Speaker 1: fertilization happens in what's often called ground phase, and then
Speaker 1: the females head to their breeding ground, which sometimes requires migration,
Speaker 1: something we're going to talk about a lot more throughout
Speaker 1: this episode. And then they lay their eggs. As we
Speaker 1: said on milkweed plants, a single female can lay as
Speaker 1: many as three hundred to five hundred eggs over the
Speaker 1: course of several weeks. And when the caterpillars hatch, as
Speaker 1: Tracy said, they start to munch. And the caterpillars of
Speaker 1: monarchs are black, yellow and white stripe. They're even pretty
Speaker 1: interesting looking. In that stage, it takes about two weeks
Speaker 1: for monarchs to go through their egg and larva stages.
Speaker 1: Once they've reached full size as a caterpillar, loaded up
Speaker 1: with all those glycosides from their food source, they enter
Speaker 1: the pupa stage. Pupation is when the monarch caterpillar forms
Speaker 1: a case around its body, known as a chrysalist. Normally
Speaker 1: this hangs from the underside of the milkweed leaf inside
Speaker 1: the crysalis. Over period of nine to fifteen days, metamorphosis
Speaker 1: takes place. The insects wings grow in and its body
Speaker 1: changes shape. Once it emerges from the crysalist at changes
Speaker 1: even more as the wings attain their full stretch in
Speaker 1: the body elongates. Yeah. I have also seen some research
Speaker 1: that said that the milkweed is not really where they're
Speaker 1: gonna do their their pupa stage. I have read sources
Speaker 1: that say both. So just f y I have that
Speaker 1: rang oddly to you. Uh. The life span of monarchs varies,
Speaker 1: and that is actually connected to their migration cycle. Most
Speaker 1: generations of monarchs live for a few weeks. You'll sometimes
Speaker 1: listed as a month. Uh, You'll sometimes see it as
Speaker 1: six weeks. But the generation that hatches late in the
Speaker 1: summer is destined for the fall migration south for winter,
Speaker 1: and there's a cool mechanism in place to enable them
Speaker 1: to live long enough to make that trip, which is
Speaker 1: that they have a delay in their sexual maturation. While
Speaker 1: normally a monarch butterflies life would be all about finding
Speaker 1: a mate once it matures and then laying eggs, completing
Speaker 1: its life mission, the pre autumn group doesn't normally mate
Speaker 1: until after they have over winter in the reproduction cycle
Speaker 1: begins in March, so they can live as long as
Speaker 1: eight months. Monarch butterflies are generally considered to be native
Speaker 1: to North and South America, Although the population in South
Speaker 1: America is now quite small, they can be found in
Speaker 1: small numbers and several other places. Hawaii, Spain, and Australia
Speaker 1: all have their own monarch populations, but North America is
Speaker 1: really their primary location. Yeah. You will also see a
Speaker 1: lot of different information about how they got to places
Speaker 1: like Hawaii, Spain, and Australia, whether those were brought there
Speaker 1: by people, or whether they migrated there themselves, or whether
Speaker 1: they got there through some other means of naturally being
Speaker 1: there for maybe much longer than we know. What we
Speaker 1: do know is that they don't migrate in any of
Speaker 1: those other places only in North America. So there are
Speaker 1: two recognized populations of monarch butterflies in North America. The
Speaker 1: western breeding group consists of the butterflies that are west
Speaker 1: of the Rocky Mountain. The Eastern group lives and breeds
Speaker 1: primarily in Canada and the Great Plains, as well as
Speaker 1: areas farther to the east. And perhaps the most unique
Speaker 1: characteristic of monarch butterflies is the fact that they do migrate.
Speaker 1: The western monarchs typically over winter in southern California, in
Speaker 1: the eastern group migrates to central Mexico for winter. It
Speaker 1: takes generations to make the full cycle of their journey.
Speaker 1: The migration southward typically happens in one generation, and then
Speaker 1: the northward migration happens in two to four, depending on
Speaker 1: how far north they travel. After each generation lays eggs,
Speaker 1: they die, and the resulting offspring continue on with the track. This,
Speaker 1: of course, follows a route that shifts with temperatures. What's
Speaker 1: really odd and marvelous is that the generation that makes
Speaker 1: it to the southernmost destination point always returns to the
Speaker 1: same place, a place that that generation has never been
Speaker 1: in which it's parents and grandparent generations had also never
Speaker 1: been to either, yet they keep returning year after year.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows exactly why, although there's a great deal of
Speaker 1: study that's gone into attempting to figure it out, and
Speaker 1: we will talk about some of that work later on.
Speaker 1: Based on fossil record evidence, we know that butterflies have
Speaker 1: been around for roughly a hundred and seventy five million years,
Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly when humans became consciously aware
Speaker 1: of monarch butterflies. The first people to see and recognize
Speaker 1: them were, of course, indigenous populations of north, central and
Speaker 1: South America, but there's not really a written record of that.
Speaker 1: We do know that the oldest specimens that were known
Speaker 1: to white Europeans were in the collection of James pett Over,
Speaker 1: and that comes with some baggage that we should unpack.
Speaker 1: James Pettiver was born in London in sixteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: His father died before he was a teenager, and his
Speaker 1: maternal grandfather, Richard Elboro, paid for his schooling. In June
Speaker 1: of sixteen seventy seven, when he was fourteen, James became
Speaker 1: a athecary apprentice under a man named Charles Feldum, who
Speaker 1: worked for London's St Bartholomew's Hospital. While completing his apprenticeship
Speaker 1: and before becoming an independent apothecary, Pettever joined the Society
Speaker 1: of Apothecaries and it was through outings with this group
Speaker 1: that he began his first herbarium collection that is now
Speaker 1: in London's Natural History Museum. James finished his apprenticeship in
Speaker 1: five and opened an apothecary business of his own at
Speaker 1: the sign of the White Cross, Aldersgate Street, and that's
Speaker 1: where he worked for the rest of his life. And
Speaker 1: during that life he became incredibly well known. He was
Speaker 1: active in the science community and developed and maintained relationships
Speaker 1: with members of the Royal Society as he offered his
Speaker 1: expertise on various matters, and his herbarium collection, which grew
Speaker 1: to include thousands of samples, was really renowned. While pett
Speaker 1: Over collected many samples himself, he gained a lot of
Speaker 1: specimens thanks to his relationships with explorers and sailors who
Speaker 1: he asked to pick up unique items as traveled around
Speaker 1: the world. That's how he came into possession of a
Speaker 1: monarch butterfly, which was preserved for him between two sheets
Speaker 1: of mica paper. This is noted as having been collected
Speaker 1: between six and seventeen o nine in Maryland. Now we're
Speaker 1: mentioning all of this because it connects our knowledge of
Speaker 1: monarchs in history, as well as other information about the
Speaker 1: natural world, to the slave trade. In a paper by
Speaker 1: Kathleen S. Murphy published in the William and Mary Quarterly
Speaker 1: in October, the author tracked the people that provided pet
Speaker 1: overt specimens from the Atlantic basin, and almost half of
Speaker 1: them were on ships that traveled slave trade routes, including
Speaker 1: the ones that went to Maryland, which is where that
Speaker 1: butterfly was found. And we're talking about all of this
Speaker 1: because this is a lustrative of how deeply intertwined so
Speaker 1: many parts of European and North American history are with
Speaker 1: the slave trade, even the parts that don't on their
Speaker 1: surface have any obvious connection. In that paper, Murphy makes
Speaker 1: the point that all of the people that pett Over
Speaker 1: worked with were ships surgeons or captains, so they were
Speaker 1: men of rank who were actively engaged in slavery. No
Speaker 1: one in this transaction could really claim ignorance. So while
Speaker 1: the collections and publications of pett Over helped advanced Europe's
Speaker 1: knowledge of the natural world and of monarch butterflies. That
Speaker 1: knowledge came at a price that's really not acknowledged. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, we'll talk about mentions of monarch butterflies
Speaker 1: that came after pett Over, after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. After pett Over specimen. The next significant example
Speaker 1: we have of a monarch butterfly in the historical record
Speaker 1: is the illustration work of Mark Catesby. Katesby was born
Speaker 1: in sixty three in Essex, England, and unlike Petaver, Katesby
Speaker 1: made the trip to North America to collect specimens himself
Speaker 1: more than once. When his father died in seventeen twelve,
Speaker 1: Katesby traveled to live with his sister and her husband
Speaker 1: in Virginia, and there he began collecting seeds and specimens
Speaker 1: for collectors back home in England, as well as drawing
Speaker 1: many of them or painting them so the specimens would
Speaker 1: have accompanying illustrations. He stayed in the colonies for seven years,
Speaker 1: traveling through the Appalachian Mountains and around the southeast, and
Speaker 1: he even went to Jamaica before returning to London in
Speaker 1: seventeen nineteen. And when he got back to England, his
Speaker 1: work was very well received by the scientific community. At
Speaker 1: this point in time. Just for context, Sir Isaac Newton
Speaker 1: was chair of the Royal Society, and under the auspices
Speaker 1: of the Society, botanist William Sharard led a fundraising effort
Speaker 1: to send Katesby back to the colony so he could
Speaker 1: do more of this work. The Royal Society was able
Speaker 1: to drum up enough sponsors that it could pay for
Speaker 1: Mark Katesby's second transatlantic voyage to North America to do
Speaker 1: a more comprehensive survey of the continents, flora and fauna.
Speaker 1: He sailed in February of seventeen twenty two, and after
Speaker 1: three months at sea, made it to the destination of
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Over the course of four years, Katesby fulfilled
Speaker 1: his mission to document as much of the North American
Speaker 1: Southeast natural world as possible. We focused on the Atlantic
Speaker 1: coastal low country of South Carolina and Florida, as well
Speaker 1: as the Bahamas. After Katesby once again returned to England,
Speaker 1: he started compiling his field notes, specimens and illustrations into
Speaker 1: a two volume work titled Natural History of Carolina, Florida
Speaker 1: and the Bahama Islands. This project took a lot of time.
Speaker 1: The first volume published in seventeen twenty nine, the second
Speaker 1: not until seventeen forty seven, so it's eighteen years later.
Speaker 1: And it is in that second volume of the work,
Speaker 1: which is dedicated to Augusta, Princess of Wales, that Katesby's
Speaker 1: illustration of the monarch butterfly appears. It's quite beautiful. It
Speaker 1: is played eighty eight in the book, and it features
Speaker 1: the butterfly along with a dollar orchid and a amshell orchid,
Speaker 1: both of which are growing from the trunk of a tree.
Speaker 1: By this point, people were already calling the butterfly a monarch.
Speaker 1: It's believed that the name was given to the insect
Speaker 1: by early English colonists in North America as a nod
Speaker 1: to William the third of England, also known as William
Speaker 1: of Orange, having been born the Prince of Orange, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't yet classified scientifically. That didn't happen until seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, when Carl Linnaeus included it in his tenth
Speaker 1: edition of systema natural. Linnaeus, who was born in seventeen
Speaker 1: oh seven in Small and Sweden, is of course famous
Speaker 1: for his classification of binomial nomenclature and due to starting
Speaker 1: out without the benefit of a wealthy family to support
Speaker 1: his studies. Linnaeus who could easily be a future podcast
Speaker 1: subject because I don't think he's shown up on the
Speaker 1: show before. Surprisingly now we've mentioned him, but like not
Speaker 1: in a bunch of focus. No, he had to take
Speaker 1: kind of a slow root in his pursuit of a
Speaker 1: career and becoming a published scientific writer. His deep hist
Speaker 1: interest was botany. It was something he had loved since
Speaker 1: he was young, but he became a medical doctor to
Speaker 1: support himself, and it was only after that, after he
Speaker 1: became a doctor, that he started to get the backing
Speaker 1: to start publishing his system of Nature that started out
Speaker 1: with a first volume that was a folio just eleven
Speaker 1: pages long. Linnaeus was aided by information like Catesby's illustrations,
Speaker 1: and he placed the monarch in his taxonomy, giving it
Speaker 1: the genus Papilio and the species plexipus. Linnaeus initially put
Speaker 1: all butterflies in the genus Papilio, but that changed over time.
Speaker 1: Linnaeus had included subgenuses of which denounce was one, and
Speaker 1: that system was then refined by other taxonomists after Lennius died. Today,
Speaker 1: the Papilio genus mostly contains swallowtail butterflies, whereas the nounces
Speaker 1: its own genus composed of what sometimes called the tiger
Speaker 1: butterfly tribe or the tiger butterfly group. You'll also see
Speaker 1: the North American monarch specifically referred to as the subspecies
Speaker 1: denounced Plexipus plexipus. Yeah, that's just since there are some
Speaker 1: that are basically biologically identical, but they appear in other places.
Speaker 1: Linnaeus noted in his writing that he had chosen the
Speaker 1: names using the sons of the Greek mythological figure Agypdis,
Speaker 1: though in Greek legend, Denounced is the brother of Agypdis.
Speaker 1: Plexipus was one of a Gypdiss fifty sons, though in
Speaker 1: that legend, just to give you context, Denounce had fifty daughters.
Speaker 1: In Agypdis force denounced to marry his daughters to Agypticiss
Speaker 1: fifty sons, so convenient they had the same number, and
Speaker 1: all of the daughters, at their father's instruction, killed their
Speaker 1: new husbands on their wedding night. That's, of course, only
Speaker 1: one part of the mythology of these people, but carl
Speaker 1: Naeus may have been a bit confused on the exact
Speaker 1: nature of the story, and in any case, the nomenclature
Speaker 1: that he chose for butterflies doesn't seem to reflect any
Speaker 1: observations about their behaviors or life cycle. Observing that life
Speaker 1: cycle is something that has interested naturalists for centuries now.
Speaker 1: In one the over wintering sites of the monarch along
Speaker 1: the California coast were identified, but there was still the
Speaker 1: eastern group. Nobody was quite sure where they were going
Speaker 1: in the winter, at least nobody who didn't live where
Speaker 1: they were going. For a long time, the Gulf coast
Speaker 1: of Florida was believed to be one possibility, and naturalists
Speaker 1: hunted for that spot where the butterflies might be riding
Speaker 1: out the winter. Soon, it became apparent that although that
Speaker 1: area is warmer than other parts of the US and
Speaker 1: the winter, it still can experience frosts, and butterflies can't
Speaker 1: survive that kind of temperature drop. So that was finally
Speaker 1: ruled out, and this is where Fred and Nora Urkhardt
Speaker 1: come into the story. Fred Erkhart had been fascinated by
Speaker 1: monarch butterflies since his Toronto, Ontario childhood, and that fascination
Speaker 1: had never abated. It actually led him to study biology
Speaker 1: at the University of Toronto starting in the ninth thirties,
Speaker 1: and then he went on to earn his master's degree
Speaker 1: and his PhD in the same field. When he finished
Speaker 1: his education, he became the insect collection curator for the
Speaker 1: Royal Ontario Museum. During his education, he met Norah Roden,
Speaker 1: who was also enrolled in the school, although she was
Speaker 1: studying social work. During World War Two, Fred worked in
Speaker 1: meteorological service and when that conflict ended, he took a
Speaker 1: job at the University of Toronto and he and Nora
Speaker 1: were married. In There's was a true partnership. Nora became
Speaker 1: as passionate about butterflies as bread was, and one question
Speaker 1: really was plaguing them, which was where did these insects
Speaker 1: go in the winter? Together they sought out the answer.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting because they're now pretty well known
Speaker 1: for having done this. But uh. In one interview, friend
Speaker 1: mentioned that people were like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: There's no money in this, and he's like, it's making
Speaker 1: me crazy not to know. I want to They want
Speaker 1: to know. Uh. And one of the first things that
Speaker 1: the carts did was to try to find a way
Speaker 1: to tag butterflies. This was challenging, as you might expect.
Speaker 1: They not only had to come up with something that
Speaker 1: would stay in place, but it also couldn't hurt the
Speaker 1: butterfly or impede the insectibility to fly. They tried various
Speaker 1: paint options and labels which did not work, and then
Speaker 1: they came up with a system that finally passed the test.
Speaker 1: That test, incidentally involved gently tying the butterflies to the
Speaker 1: handlebars of Fred's bike with a fine thread, and then
Speaker 1: he would ride and make sure that they could fly
Speaker 1: along with him. But that solution was price tag stickers
Speaker 1: that were intended for glassware. Because they were light enough
Speaker 1: that they didn't make a big difference. Fred and Nora
Speaker 1: developed a careful system in which they scraped some of
Speaker 1: the scales off of one of the insects wings, and
Speaker 1: then they would fold the sticker around the edge of
Speaker 1: the wing. The butterflies kept flying as normal, seemingly unbothered.
Speaker 1: Every tiny sticker had contact information for the cart's office,
Speaker 1: so that anybody who found one of these butterflies, or
Speaker 1: even just saw them, might be able to report into
Speaker 1: the couple. But this also meant that there needed to
Speaker 1: be away to let particularly amateur lepidopters know to even
Speaker 1: be looking for butterflies with stickers on them. So the
Speaker 1: next step was a print campaign. Nora had the idea
Speaker 1: to place ads in newspapers and magazines around the United
Speaker 1: States to explain the project and ask citizens science to
Speaker 1: help out. You'll sometimes see this as like referenced as
Speaker 1: the first big citizen science project. And they got volunteers
Speaker 1: through the organization that they established, which was the Insect
Speaker 1: Migration Association, to help them tag all of the thousands
Speaker 1: of Toronto area butterflies. We'll talk about the response to
Speaker 1: those ads after we pause, and here from some of
Speaker 1: the sponsors that keep Stuffy miss in history class going.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after Nora's ad placements the data and
Speaker 1: information started flowing in. Every time someone contacted the carts
Speaker 1: to report a sighting of a butterfly, Fred and Nora
Speaker 1: noted it on a big map. One theory at the
Speaker 1: start of the project was that Eastern monarchs might be
Speaker 1: joining the Western group along the California coast. The information
Speaker 1: that Fred and Nora collected quickly made it appearent that
Speaker 1: wasn't happening. For one thing, there simply were not enough
Speaker 1: monarchs in California to make up for the migrating numbers
Speaker 1: leaving Southern Canada. In the US, the next step was
Speaker 1: to travel to the southern US themselves to see what
Speaker 1: they might be able to find out. So they drove
Speaker 1: twenty thousand miles as they traveled all around Texas, just
Speaker 1: chasing leads and coming up short. Their information. Stopped at
Speaker 1: the Mexican border because their ad placements had only been
Speaker 1: in US papers. So they did the next logical thing,
Speaker 1: which was to put announcements in papers south of the border,
Speaker 1: and one of their primary responses came from an American
Speaker 1: man named Kenneth Brugger, who wrote, quote, I read with
Speaker 1: interest your article on the monarch. It occurred to me
Speaker 1: that I might be of some help. Kenneth was an
Speaker 1: engineer from Wisconsin working at a textile firm in Mexico City,
Speaker 1: and he had seen groups of monarchs in the area
Speaker 1: before long. Brogger and a woman who he identified as
Speaker 1: Cathy Iguado, and we'll talk about him identifying her as
Speaker 1: that in a bit started tracking the insects in their Winnebago.
Speaker 1: Brogger and Aguado married in May nineteen seventy four, after
Speaker 1: they had started helping the ark Harts, and the two
Speaker 1: couples met when Kenneth and Cathy, whose real name is Catalina.
Speaker 1: She apparently did not actually like the name Kathy, which
Speaker 1: is what her husband called her when they visited Toronto.
Speaker 1: After the Broggers returned to Mexico. There was a system.
Speaker 1: The Harts would send them tips that they got from
Speaker 1: people who had spotted the tagged butterflies, and Kinne than
Speaker 1: Catalina would follow up on those sidings and then report back.
Speaker 1: They were essentially being the boots on the ground for
Speaker 1: the Canadian couple. Often Ken would drive and Catalina would
Speaker 1: scan the landscape with binoculars looking for butterflies. At this point,
Speaker 1: Ken had retired and they were free to pretty much
Speaker 1: spend their time as they wished. Yeah, they had gone
Speaker 1: from doing this only on the weekends to this being
Speaker 1: basically their full time lives. Um, they did a lot
Speaker 1: of it. We're telling a very fast version, but it
Speaker 1: took them a long time. Throughout Christmas nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: and into New Year's Day of nineteen seventy five, the
Speaker 1: Bruggers had been following monarchs near the mountains in mitchokn
Speaker 1: that's about hundred and fifty miles from where Catalina had
Speaker 1: grown up. On January second, nineteen seventy five, they hiked
Speaker 1: up the mountain known as Sarah Polone, which is an
Speaker 1: old volcano, and in that afternoon, after a long day
Speaker 1: of hiking in fairly miserable conditions, Catalina looked up and
Speaker 1: she yelled back to Ken that she needed a camera
Speaker 1: because they had found it a surreal sanctuary, filled with
Speaker 1: monarchs everywhere they looked. Catalina later described this moment this
Speaker 1: way in an interview quote, neither of us could talk.
Speaker 1: I will never get over seeing so many butterflies at
Speaker 1: one time. I don't have the words to describe what
Speaker 1: I saw. My mind just went blank. Then Ken and
Speaker 1: I walked together. We kept whispering, wow, Wow, Wow. We
Speaker 1: didn't want to scare the monarchs and their own sanctuary.
Speaker 1: The ground was a foot and a half deep with them.
Speaker 1: They covered the tree trunks like pages of a book.
Speaker 1: We stepped carefully so as not to kill any With
Speaker 1: each step, I'd shake my foot back and forth until
Speaker 1: I could feel the bare ground. Then we stood in
Speaker 1: the middle of a clearing, and as Catalina became still,
Speaker 1: the monarchs just started landing right on her. She recounted quote,
Speaker 1: I felt their scratchy feet on my face and thought
Speaker 1: to myself, Oh, my god, what are we going to
Speaker 1: do now? I wish everyone in the world had my
Speaker 1: eyes right now to see what I'm seeing and feel
Speaker 1: what I'm feeling, because this is so amazing. My god,
Speaker 1: you butterflies flew thousands of miles and here you are.
Speaker 1: After hurrying back down the trail in the dying light,
Speaker 1: Ken called the ark Hearts, and the days that followed,
Speaker 1: Catalina and Ken found several more colonies. They told nobody
Speaker 1: besides Bread and Nora, for fear that this mountain forest
Speaker 1: would then be flushed with humans who would not be
Speaker 1: as careful as they were. And the following year, when
Speaker 1: it was time for the Monarchs to migrate to Mexico,
Speaker 1: the ark Hearts joined Ken and Catalina and Sarah Polone.
Speaker 1: They were also accompanied by a National Geographic photographer. In
Speaker 1: August of ninety six, the Monarch Migration News was the
Speaker 1: cover story for National Geographic. It ran with the title
Speaker 1: Discovered the Monarch's Mexican Haven. The cover image is Catalina
Speaker 1: covered in monarchs something. It mentions Ken Brugger's dog Coola,
Speaker 1: being by his side as he sought out these butterflies.
Speaker 1: It casually references his wife, Kathy, who's referred to as
Speaker 1: quote a bright and delightful Mexican. It never says that
Speaker 1: she is the person in the cover image. It also
Speaker 1: doesn't acknowledge that the local population had known that the
Speaker 1: monarchs were over wintering there for generations, and most of
Speaker 1: those people were like, yes, my grandfather talked about these
Speaker 1: all the time. Um and literally, that thing that Tracy
Speaker 1: just read about Kathy, as she was called in the article,
Speaker 1: is all that she has mentioned. The rite up is
Speaker 1: full of quotes from Fred Urkhardt, who did undeniably catalyze
Speaker 1: the entire project. He told the magazine quote, those who
Speaker 1: have had a dream and have lived to see that
Speaker 1: dream come true will have some conception of my feelings
Speaker 1: when I first entered the Mexican forest, and there before
Speaker 1: my eyes was the realization of a dream that had
Speaker 1: haunted me since I was sixteen. After that article published,
Speaker 1: Fred and Nora's life was pretty much all about butterfly study.
Speaker 1: Fred wrote numerous books and articles about their tracking project
Speaker 1: in the ongoing study and discoveries regarding monarchs, and Nora
Speaker 1: kept their organization going and managed their business affairs. Catalina
Speaker 1: and Ken divorced in the early nineties, and Catalina had
Speaker 1: stayed out of the public eye as the ark Hearts
Speaker 1: and ken Brugger became known as the team that cracked
Speaker 1: the butterfly migration puzzle. But today she's the only surviving
Speaker 1: member of the group, and over the years she's come
Speaker 1: to be more widely recognized for the part that she
Speaker 1: played in this discovery. She consulted on the docu drama
Speaker 1: about the monarchs called Flight of the Butterflies that came
Speaker 1: out in She advocates for the conservation of monarch habitats
Speaker 1: and continues to be on that keep a low profile.
Speaker 1: It's clear today that because she was the only Spanish
Speaker 1: fluent Mexican born member of the team, it was Catalina
Speaker 1: who really enabled the mission and to actually meet its goals,
Speaker 1: particularly the segments of her journey with Ken where they
Speaker 1: had to negotiate both terrain and the local populations that
Speaker 1: he had really no experience with. In an interview that
Speaker 1: she gave in twenty Catalina told a journalist quote, I
Speaker 1: searched for the monarchs because of the love I have
Speaker 1: for all insects and all of nature, for the awe
Speaker 1: that they provoked in me in all the beautiful and
Speaker 1: ugly ways. I care about the truth and the marvelous
Speaker 1: way that nature works in all of us. And then
Speaker 1: here's the big reason that Holly wanted to do this episode.
Speaker 1: Holly is the one who researched it. In case that
Speaker 1: was not obvious, Uh, some of our listeners have probably
Speaker 1: guessed it. The monarch butterfly was classified as endangered on
Speaker 1: July two, that's about a week before we're recording this
Speaker 1: episode and a few weeks before it will come out.
Speaker 1: According to information reviewed by the International Union for the
Speaker 1: Conservation of Nature or i U see in, in the
Speaker 1: last decade, monarch numbers have declined between twenty three and
Speaker 1: seventy two. It's a really wide swing, and that's due
Speaker 1: to variations in measurement, something that's pretty natural when you're
Speaker 1: trying to track an insect by site. The western monarch
Speaker 1: population has declined by n nine per cent since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and their eastern counterparts are doing slightly better.
Speaker 1: But the numbers are still really grave. Their decline since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties is eighty percent, so over just four
Speaker 1: decades they've gone from thriving to endangered. There are multiple
Speaker 1: contributors to these dramatic drops. One of the biggest is
Speaker 1: habitat loss. Logging and construction have wiped out forests that
Speaker 1: monarchs once visited along your migratory paths. Another is pesticides.
Speaker 1: Chemical treatments have not only killed butterflies, but also the
Speaker 1: milkweed plants that they need to survive. Climate change is
Speaker 1: another threat. During extreme weather events like storms, floods, and drought,
Speaker 1: butterflies die in large numbers. The United States has not
Speaker 1: yet listed the monarch as an endangered species through the
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act, but many conservation and environmentalist groups across
Speaker 1: the country are lobbying for that listing. That listing would
Speaker 1: be an important step toward guiding recovery efforts because once
Speaker 1: the species is on the list, critical habitat areas become
Speaker 1: legally protected. That catalyzes the development of recovery plans as
Speaker 1: well as carrying them out. And there is some indication
Speaker 1: that numbers might be bolstering a little showing that in
Speaker 1: some areas the numbers in the population have gone up
Speaker 1: ever so slightly. This is just in the last year,
Speaker 1: but it isn't necessarily a sign that things will continue
Speaker 1: to get better on their own, but it does offer
Speaker 1: some hope that with conservation efforts in place, the population
Speaker 1: may continue to rebound. Today we know more than ever
Speaker 1: about monarchs, but we also still have a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: There have been projects that have involved genetic sequencing of
Speaker 1: the speci used to try to more fully understand their
Speaker 1: inner compass and their longevity shifts, as well as color differences.
Speaker 1: There have also been concerned that some studies of monarch
Speaker 1: DNA have accidentally used misidentified butterflies that are not monarchs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of butterfly species that kind of
Speaker 1: mimic the look of monarchs because it's beneficial to them
Speaker 1: to look like a toxic animal um and that there
Speaker 1: may have been some confusion in there. Mexico has taken
Speaker 1: steps to protect the monarchs over wintering locations in the
Speaker 1: country established the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, and at the
Speaker 1: time of its founding, that reserve consisted of four forests
Speaker 1: totaling about sixty two square miles of land, but today
Speaker 1: that area has expanded. It's now two hundred seventeen square
Speaker 1: miles and most of this land is communally owned by
Speaker 1: the communities that live there, and efforts have been made
Speaker 1: to help transition the residents of those communities from their
Speaker 1: former occupations in fields like logging, which would have been
Speaker 1: detrimental to butterflies, two more conservation minded sources of income,
Speaker 1: such as bee keeping. There is also a growing eco
Speaker 1: tourism economy there. If you live in the US and
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about how you can help
Speaker 1: monarch populations, you can visit Monarch joint Venture dot org.
Speaker 1: It's a partnership of multiple agencies and conservation groups from
Speaker 1: across the country. Butterflies, yeah, about which I got very
Speaker 1: choked up at the end. Um. I have fun listener
Speaker 1: mail though about something that several people have reached out
Speaker 1: to me about on Twitter from one of our previous episodes,
Speaker 1: and that is Salmon Vertebrae. Oh yeah. This particular email
Speaker 1: is from our listener Elizabeth, who writes, Hye, Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: I love your podcast and my ears perked up at
Speaker 1: the mention of Salmon Vertebrae. As beads. This is a
Speaker 1: great idea with regard to your concern about smell. I
Speaker 1: have some advice. I am an our geologist. I won't
Speaker 1: say where Elizabeth works, just to be safe and preserve
Speaker 1: her privacy, and my specialty is zoo archaeology. On occasion,
Speaker 1: I have to turn an animal carcass into a skeleton
Speaker 1: for comparative purposes, so I have some relevant experience. Once
Speaker 1: you've cleaned the vertebrae in a very low simmer to
Speaker 1: soften and remove any soft bits, soak the vertebrae in
Speaker 1: a bath of hydrogen peroxide over the counter stuff is
Speaker 1: fine for a few minutes, and then let them dry.
Speaker 1: Repeat the peroxide bath until they don't smell. Do not
Speaker 1: use bleach that will make the vertebrae brittle over time
Speaker 1: and chalky. For your amusement, I enclose a picture of
Speaker 1: my cat, Eggs, who is helping me take notes from
Speaker 1: my weekly D and D game. Best regards, Elizabeth. Okay,
Speaker 1: Eggs is an orange tabby and adorable and I want
Speaker 1: to kiss Eggs. Um. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. This
Speaker 1: is great information. So for any of you that reached
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter about ways that you might
Speaker 1: also do a salmon bead project. We'll see if I
Speaker 1: get around to it, but I still think it's pretty great. Uh,
Speaker 1: then that's how to do it. There have also been
Speaker 1: people that have sent me that amazing UM. I didn't
Speaker 1: take notes on it for this, but there's an artist
Speaker 1: who has done some really beautiful salmon bead garment projects
Speaker 1: that are just spectacularly beautiful. So UH, seek those out
Speaker 1: because they're worth looking at. Thank you again, Elizabeth. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History podcast at my heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media as Missed
Speaker 1: in History, and if you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet,
Speaker 1: you can do that on the I heart Radio app
Speaker 1: or wherever it is you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.