© Ellen Harasimowicz
Some of you may recall that I spent some quality time in the milkweed meadow last fall, watching children and adults tag monarch butterflies in the name of science. I even tagged some monarchs myself. These adventures were all aimed at learning about the tagging process so that I could write about it faithfully in my forthcoming book on citizen science. Going to Mexico to witness the other end of the tagging story was a natural extension of this research. It was also the only way for me to uncover the small details that lend a book of this sort authenticity. Here are some of the surprising discoveries I recorded in my travel journal …
”Our guide, Arturo, had a friend who had found two tagged butterflies; sadly, the friend wasn’t around. But when we returned to the lot at the base of the mountain (a treacherous ride that deserves more mention!) this friend showed up. He tracked Ellen, Gerardo, and I down on our way to lunch. He was shy about his finds, but he let us hold them and I was shocked that the tags 1) weren’t attached to a butterfly (I assumed tags were turned over to MonarchWatch with tag intact) and 2) had the trademark monarch scale pattern on the backside (when the tag is removed from the butterfly wing, orange and black scales come with it).”
”Chip Taylor funds the buy back of recovered MonarchWatch tags from his own pocket. This is shocking! In response to the huge number of recovered tags turned in at Cerro Pelon, he said, ‘If [El] Rosario is anything like this, we’ll run out of money.’”
Two days later I wrote this:
”By the time I was finished interviewing, Chip and crew had run out of funds. Several locals came into the Visitor Center hoping to sell recovered tags, but they had to be turned away. Two young girls were particularly memorable to me; they asked Chip if he could please buy their 47 recovered tags. He had to say no. I could tell this was hard for Chip; it was hard for me, too. Useful migration data was being turned away, and—worse still—two families in need of cash were disappointed. Will they save the tags and come again next year?”
This last was a real stunner. Daniel is a five-year-old boy who turned in twenty recovered tags with his family:
”I asked Daniel’s family—who between them had turned in twenty recovered tags—why the tags were so important to the American scientists. They had no idea.”
To borrow a calculation:
Cost of my trip: Hefty
Value of perspective gained: Priceless
Now to get that book written …