One group of travelers not canceling their flight plans this spring: monarch butterflies. That said, the migratory population currently heading north from their winter roosts in Mexico will be 53% smaller than last year. The World Wildlife Fund Mexico (WWF) … Read More
Thousands gathered at Pearl in San Antonio to close out the fourth annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival on Sunday. The Festival, celebrating pollinators, plants, and the ecosystems that sustain us, featured more than a dozen events, including gardening workshops, movie … Read More
On Sunday, October 20, San Antonio will have a unique opportunity to learn the Waggle Dance, the unique, booty-shaking romp that bees perform for each other to communicate the location of nectar and pollen. Never heard of the Waggle Dance? … Read More
The fourth annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival takes flight in San Antonio October 12 – 20, a weeklong celebration of science, citizen science, art, and education. The event unfolds at multiple venues, and includes four educational workshops, two movie screenings, … Read More
South Texas is seeing an abundance of monarch butterfly caterpillars in recent weeks. Resulting chrysalises and butterflies suggest a robust 2019 monarch butterfly season as a bounty of wildflowers awaits. Monarchs typically leave their overwintering roosts in the Mexican mountains … Read More
When it comes to the 2019 monarch butterfly population, the numbers suggest catastrophe in California and a rebound in Mexico. On the west coast, the news is dismal. The western population of monarch butterflies, which travel up and down the … Read More
Forest ecologist and National Wildlife Federation Monarch Outreach Coordinator Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñòn will trek from Austin to San Antonio October 19 to participate as a panelist in Butterflies without Borders: the Monarch Migration and our Changing Climate. The event will be presented … Read More
The growing popularity of raising monarch butterflies at home has sparked a contentious debate among citizen scientists, professional academics, and butterfly enthusiasts. Scientists and citizen scientists have expressed concerns about the legions of amateurs who are breeding large numbers of … Read More
The 2018 monarch butterfly migration is off to a great start. Members of the DPLEX, an email listserv and online community that includes hundreds of monarch butterfly aficionados throughout Canada and the U.S., have begun the annual frenetic email exchange launched by … Read More
The sensory overload of walking into a forest that holds a billion Monarchs. That’s what biologist Karen Oberhauser, Ph.D, remembers most vividly from her first trip to the monarch butterfly roosting sites in the Mexican mountains more than 20 years … Read More