"Little wonder, the annual migration of the western monarchs-flying up the coast from Mexico-is one of the great natural wonders of the West Coast. Or, I should say, it was. As I write, at the height of fall harvest, we are at the height of the monarch migration. Let me ask our readers-trash consumerism aside, has anyone seen a single solitary one?"
"Although it goes little reported, in the last 10 years, the monarch population has collapsed, from a degraded and declining baseline of several million in the 1990s to just 9,000 this last year. That means if one has been so lucky-so blessed-to see one monarch this year, in 1995 they would have seen 200 monarch butterflies floating through our skies."
"The only one I have seen was on one of our murals, which has been transformed, ironically, from a celebration of this place and its natural abundance into a memorial for the dead. What does the probable extinction of the monarch butterfly, our emblem, mean to us? What is the significance that monarchs are thought to carry our spirits to the afterlife according to Mexican folkloric belief? What will become of our souls when they are gone?"
The monarch butterfly functions as a regional emblem appearing on clothing, jewelry, murals, and community art. The western monarch annual migration along the coast from Mexico was once a major natural spectacle. In the last decade the western monarch population collapsed from several million in the 1990s to about 9,000 last year. Observers who now see a single monarch would have seen hundreds in 1995; many see none and skies feel empty. Murals celebrating abundance have become memorials. Mexican folkloric belief links monarchs to carrying spirits to the afterlife, raising cultural and existential concerns. Butterfly populations are collapsing across the United States.
Read at Metro Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley's Leading Weekly
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