Long Live the Monarchs!

FOR more than a week, the skies over the highlands of central Mexico were almost cloudless. But on January 12, a storm blew in from the Pacific Ocean, dumping rain and snow everywhere. Even after the bad weather had moved off, temperatures hovered around the freezing point and often dipped below it. For the monarch butterflies that spend the winter in the region, the cumulative effect was devastating. Researchers believe that half a billion of them-about 75 percent of the population-were wiped out. It was a biological disaster.

That was four years ago. Last winter the numbers looked even worse, reflecting the fewest monarchs on record. This time the culprit wasn’t a storm in Mexico, but a wet and cool summer in the upper Midwest, the monarch’s primary breeding range. Once again, the cruel forces of nature seemed to conspire against the species. “I would say the monarch is in a precarious situation now,” said Lincoln Brower, America’s dean of monarch experts who is also a biologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. From him and others, there was talk of “permanent devastation” to the species.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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FOR more than a week, the skies over the highlands of central Mexico were almost cloudless. But on January 12, a storm blew in from the Pacific Ocean, dumping rain and snow everywhere. Even after the bad weather had moved off, temperatures hovered around the freezing point and often dipped below it. For the monarch butterflies that spend the winter in the region, the cumulative effect was devastating. Researchers believe that half a billion of them-about 75 percent of the population-were wiped out. It was a biological disaster.

That was four years ago. Last winter the numbers looked even worse, reflecting the fewest monarchs on record. This time the culprit wasn’t a storm in Mexico, but a wet and cool summer in the upper Midwest, the monarch’s primary breeding range. Once again, the cruel forces of nature seemed to conspire against the species. “I would say the monarch is in a precarious situation now,” said Lincoln Brower, America’s dean of monarch experts who is also a biologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. From him and others, there was talk of “permanent devastation” to the species.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.