Monica Maeckle is a glass-half-full kind of gal. 

How else to take her pronouncement about the Monarch butterfly on Tuesday night, that their ”migration is endangered, but the butterfly is not”?

It feels a little like saying “The Louvre Museum is burning to the ground, but we’ll still have great digital pictures of all the art.”

Frankly, I don’t know quite how I felt after Maeckle spoke as part of the i3 (ideas that inform & inspire) lecture series.

Encouraged? (We’ll always have butterflies … somewhere.)

Optimistic? (The species will survive and maybe once again flourish when we get our ecological shit together.)

Deeply saddened? (The majestic migration over thousands of miles by this fantastic and delicate creature may no longer inspire poets, artists, philosophers, and the downtrodden masses in search of hope.)

Ambivalent? (Well, we’ll always have great digital pictures of the butterfly migrations.)

Angry? (How did we let our environment degrade to the point, where the survival of the Monarch butterfly is at risk?)

Bitter? (Why must the butterfly adjust this pattern of survival that is centuries old? Why can’t humankind adjust its lifestyles to ensure the butterflies continue to flourish?)

Questions. I have so many questions.

Maeckle did her job. She’s a journalist. Not a scientist.

And like Mark Twain said, the job of a journalist is not only “reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”

I think the seemingly casual pronouncement that butterfly migration as we know it could become a thing of the past upset more than a few people.

On the other hand, perspective: The very idea of “democracy” seems far more endangered than a bunch of butterflies.

I can assure you that I won’t be answering any of these concerns to your satisfaction but let’s back up a bit and see what it is that we’re all in a knot about. Shall we?

The arrival of the monarch butterfly to Mexico is a big deal culturally and biologically, although you’ve probably seen more butterflies as appliques on the denim jackets of retired school teachers and on handbags in the artisan markets.

The Indigenous forest communities of central Mexico—the Purépecha of Michoacán and the Mazahua of México State – connected the return of the Monarchs by the millions in the Fall with the return of the souls of their ancestors. The migration connects with the annual Day of the Dead celebrations.

In Mexico, the migration is sacred.

North of Mexico, it is a thing of science.

When the weather cools, Monarchs east of the Rockies begin the flight to Mexico. (West of the Rockies they head for the California coastline.) They come from as far away as southern Canada. Some misinformed Monarchs fly to Florida where they think migrants are welcome, but the majority funnel through Texas en route to Central Mexico where they winter in forests at high elevations.

And become a sustainable tourist attraction while awaiting the end of winter in the United States.

The tourist thing is relatively new.

The migration is a thing of beauty that has taken thousands of years to accomplish. Year in, year out, the butterflies know just when to head south and where to stop for nectar/fuel along the way.

These butterflies are built for travel, not propagation. They fly as many as 3,000 miles. There is no butterfly sex on the southbound train. In fact, the butterflies won’t procreate until spring when it is time to return.

They head for what Maeckle called “the Goldilocks climate – not too hot, not too cold.”  The areas have some key elements for survival – dense stands of oyamel fir trees provide a space to hang out, clouds and fog provide moisture, and the trees provide blockage from cold winds.

This Goldilocks climate is also prime for the growing of avocados for the lucrative U.S. market. That should give you a clue when the word “conflict” comes up.

The Monarch’s winter home needs to be calm and cool because the butterflies are living off the fats they ingest on the way down. Kind of like tourists on a cruise ship, they want maximum experience with minimal effort. But that means no wild dancing, buffet tables, and sex until spring. (So maybe not like cruise ship tourists.)

Somehow, the butterflies know just when to head north. And again, their bodies change for the trip home. The males impregnate the females then die, like good fellows. The females head north in search of milkweed. That’s where they drop their eggs, by the hundreds. The birth and death cycle occurs three times on their way to their summer homes.

Follow the milkweed!

The northbound butterflies have shorter lifespans, are more fertile, and fly shorter distances than did their southbound great-grandparents. Crazy, eh?

Here’s the amazing part, these butterflies have never been to Mexico. And yet, come the fall,  they will return to the same winter homes as their great grandparents before them.

Astounding. Magical. And, perhaps, a way of life headed for extinction.

Last year saw the second-lowest Monarch population in Mexico since the butterfly census began. Now, migrations fluctuate wildly from year to year, affected by weather, food, pesticides, housing developments … there are so many ways to mess up a migration.

But it is worth noting that the lowest population was recorded only a few years earlier.

A mere fluctuation? Or the harbinger of end times for Monarch migration?

Maeckle sees a “perfect storm of endangerments” – including hotter weather, less rain, illegal harvesting of the pines in Mexico, encroaching agriculture.

“Insect populations are famously volatile,” she observes. Currently, the Monarch butterfly population is in decline. But endangered? Maeckle says there are a lot of species in line ahead of the Monarch for the “endangered species” designation.

And besides, there are other Monarch populations around the world.

She says that, as the journey south grows more perilous and less certain, the butterflies adapt. “If breeding conditions are fine (where they are), they won’t migrate….migration becomes less necessary.”

Those conditions? Food source, hospitable climate, and the ability to reproduce. “We’re seeing less migration and more local reproduction,” she adds. Maeckle happens to live in one of those “local” spots, San Antonio, Texas, which for tourism purposes and bragging rights calls itself the Monarch Capital of World, or something like that.

To extend the stay of the butterflies, the city plants lots of milkweed along the river – all year long. Maeckle says they are trying to convince the city to mow down the milkweed in the fall so that it won’t be a roadside attraction for destination-driven butterflies.

The rule is: sucre plants (for fat) in the fall, milkweed (for egg laying) in the spring and summer.

That means, for example, that San Miguel de Allende which is 300 miles north of the sanctuary areas, needs sunflowers, Zinnia linearis, and daisy-like flowers for nectar/fuel, according to Ellen Sharp of the Audubon Society. If you have milkweed in your garden, cut it out. (Find out more at ellensharp.com)

Maeckle notes that in Mexico, an effort is being made to move the butterfly sanctuaries to higher elevations by planting fir seedlings above the normal 10,000-foot elevation. This reflects the warming weather, avocado encroachments, and bandit loggers but it will take time for those forests to grow. Time the butterflies may not have.

There are a lot of moving parts to the Monarch butterfly migration story but each and every one of them affects one thing only: survival.

Butterflies do what every other species does when threatened with extinction. They adapt. And yeah, largely thanks to humankind, we know that doesn’t always work out.

Maeckle sounds optimistic almost to the point of ambivalence. Sure, we need to protect the environment as best we can, she says, and yes butterflies are “very volatile – but incredibly adaptable.”

OK, but I don’t think survival alone is a high benchmark. Each of the elements along the migration path – weather, food sources, toxic pesticides, degradation of environments, etc. is a bright red flag that says we as a species are screwing up.

To save the migration path of butterflies requires saving the planet Earth.

We need to aim higher.