Words and Photography by Ian Vorster
Above: Monarch butterflies cluster together for warmth at their overwintering site in a butterfly preserve in Goleta, California.
Below: A group of volunteers monitor the coast along Santa Barbara from Coal Oil Point as they count gray whales.
It was a crisp morning following a cold night in Goleta’s Coronado Monarch Butterfly Preserve. As an 8th grade homeschool class crossed a beam that had been dropped across a swampy area, one student looked up at the Eucalyptus grove and — with one part expectation and one part disappointment — quietly sighed, “Where are the butterflies?”
They were supposed to be roosting high up in the leafy branches. The small group didn’t immediately see any monarchs in the trees — instead they noticed a few on the ground, here and there. But then, as eyes became accustomed to the early morning gloom, one by one the students realized that an inordinate number of brightly colored insects were scattered on the ground throughout the grove.
As they walked and photographed them, stepping carefully, the teacher explained why so many were to be found there. With a windy night, many had blown off their perch; and with it also being a cold night, they had not been able to stretch their wings and fly. They were waiting for the caress of the first rays to erase the stiffness from their limbs.
About two hours later, when the grove was bathed in a strong warm light, swarm after swarm began to burst into flight from the leaves above, not unlike the sudden release of a thousand balloons filled with helium. “Now I get it,” said the same student.
This was what the class had come to see — generations of golden-winged insects in a grove of grey-leafed trees — returned to where their multi-generational lifecycle had begun.
The migration was what inspired Elizabeth Howard to found Journey North in 1994. Her interest piqued by the early internet-based projects in which school children tracked human expeditions, for example across the Arctic by dogsled, or Africa by bicycle, Howard saw what she described as “a clear and exciting parallel between these expeditions, and the wildlife migrations that cross the globe with the seasons.” Both were for her, the ultimate survival stories.
“The same challenges encountered on a remote expedition — changing weather, lack of food, insufficient time — have always challenged migratory species as they travel across the globe or pass through our own backyards.” In 2019, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum then acquired the program. The UW-Madison Arboretum is dedicated to fostering ecologically sustainable relationships between people and the land through innovative, collaborative science, stewardship, education, and public engagement. Participatory science programs like Journey North aligned with the Arboretum’s mission.
Journey North tallies the first-of-year sightings of hummingbirds, robins, monarchs, and blooming tulips amongst others. he program offers an easy entry into citizen science. They focus on high interest topics, a simple protocol, and real-world applications, which results in a large network of participants who are currently based at more than 50,000 sites across North America. The program has two goals, scientific research, and education.
Science: The data is used to document how migratory species respond to climate and the changing seasons, and the long-term dataset allows for valuable year-to-year comparisons, while also providing for real-time analysis.
Education: Journey North began as a school-based initiative, but over time, as citizen or participatory science and technology grew in importance, enrollment spilled over to the public. Participation is now only around 30% school based and 70% non-school.
For educators, Journey North provides a rich array of resources, images, video clips, articles, activities, and lesson plans all of which enable teachers to build interdisciplinary studies into the curriculum. Journey North has also published nine papers based on the monarch butterfly, and one on the ruby-throated hummingbird.
“For monarch butterflies, our findings have revealed fall migration pathways to Mexico, the rate of spring re-colonization into breeding grounds, and the variable presence of monarchs wintering in the U.S. Gulf coast states, for example,” added Howard. “We also regularly provide data to scientists, resources managers, and conservation planners who need information about the spatial temporal dynamics of a species distribution.” The effort supports the program and lends Journey North the authority and authenticity that educators value.
A homeschool class walked through Coronado Butterfly Preserve in Goleta, California early March. Here one student practices his nature journaling of the monarch butterfly at right.
As it gets colder each year, monarch butterflies migrate south toward the California coast. They cluster together in large groups at the overwintering sites to survive before then migrating back north to start the next breeding season.
