Sabino Marín Reyes decorates the graves of relatives to celebrate Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), in Comunidad Indígena Francisco Serrato, Michoacán, Mexico. Members of the Mazahua Indigenous community believe that the souls of the departed return in the form of monarch butterflies to enjoy the offerings left on graves and altars. 
2024 Photo Contest, North and Central America, Stories

Saving the Monarchs

Photographer

Jaime Rojo

for National Geographic
02 November, 2022

Sabino Marín Reyes decorates the graves of relatives to celebrate Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), in Comunidad Indígena Francisco Serrato, Michoacán, Mexico. Members of the Mazahua Indigenous community believe that the souls of the departed return in the form of monarch butterflies to enjoy the offerings left on graves and altars. 

People across Canada, the US, and Mexico are banding together to reverse the more than 80% decline that has affected the eastern migratory monarch butterfly population since the mid-1990s. 

North American Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are divided into two main groups: western monarchs, which breed west of the Rocky Mountains and overwinter in southern California; and the eastern monarchs, which breed in the Great Plains and Canada, and overwinter in central Mexico, where mountain hillsides of oyamel fir forest provide an ideal protective microclimate. 

Eastern monarchs, undergo a complex multi-generational migration. In early spring, the butterflies that spent the winter in Mexico start to migrate back north. Two generations, each living two to six weeks, migrate northwards through the United States and Canada as they breed and lay their eggs. As the days get shorter and cooler, a third or fourth generation will undergo a hormonal change that puts mating on hold and extends their lifespan up to eight or nine months. This super-generation will travel 4,000 kilometers back south, to the warmth of the oyamel forests in Mexico, where they have never been before. How they find their way back to the exact same location remains a mystery.

Deforestation of these winter sanctuaries, and loss of the monarch’s breeding habitat along their migratory route due to expanding industrial agriculture, threaten the population. Once common, their staple food, milkweed, is rapidly disappearing from the prairies as a result of native praises being given over to agriculture, the use of herbicides, and mowing along roadsides. Monarch caterpillars’ diet consists solely of milkweed, and they can consume 200 times their body weight of the plant as they mature. 

In addition, light pollution from cities can cause confusion between night and day, disrupting patterns of when to fly and when to rest. Roadkill on busy highways, and, recently, extreme weather events caused by climate change compound the situation.

Citizens across North America are joining forces to combat the decline of monarch butterflies by planting milkweed and other nectar-rich plants; protecting migration routes (for example by creating habitat corridors along interstate highways), and restoring the forests at the overwintering sites. The photographer has been following the story of monarch butterflies for nearly 20 years.


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Jaime Rojo
About the photographer

Jaime Rojo is a photographer and National Geographic Explorer with a background in environmental sciences who specializes in conservation stories about wilderness and wildlife.  He is a contributor to National Geographic Magazine, an International League of Conservation Photographers Senior Fellow, and a truste...

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Technical information
Shutter Speed

1/250

ISO

200

Camera

Z 9

Jury comment

Taking a proactive, solutions oriented approach, the photographer portrays environmental change and conservation efforts in beautifully lit images. Each frame is a testament to the photographer's dedication, as he presents intimate moments that afford us with new perspectives on the natural world. In a competition filled with diverse themes this story stood out as a significant once-in-a-lifetime achievement that left the jury smiling.