The Monarchs Are All Right

Shockingly, stunningly, amazingly; the monarchs are back (but not co-staring Julianne Moore).  OK, it’s not that amazing; I pretty much predicted this would be the case last March when everyone was running around terrified because the butterflies hit an all time low (since counting started in 1993).  Actually I believe I said “I will bet anything on the population making a recovery in the years to come…”.  So, how about anything = beer, and who’s buying?

Perhaps I am celebrating a bit early.  Maybe the news isn’t so good that I can run a victory lap quite yet, but preliminary surveys look like the overwintering populations have doubled this year.  That’s a pretty good start, but we still haven’t hit the 18 year average (not an impressive statistic).  But don’t misread my intentions – I’m not claiming this one year somehow has proven the decline insignificant.  It may or may not be, all we can really say is that it’s just another data point.  The fact is that our dataset is very weak and there are factors such as local weather that create massive margins of error.  It’s also nearly impossible to extrapolate from what little data we do have.  So is the monarch a very good “canary in the coal mine”?

I would say poor at best.  How is one insect species that roosts in massive singular colonies a good indicator of our ecosystem?  Yes, they migrate from all reaches of North America, but their recent high mortality rates have nothing to do with the lives they lived outside of Mexico.  Perhaps if millions of butterflies died of some strange toxin we could heed the warning, but such was not the case.  Those poor monarchs are at the mercy of winter storms that are likely to become more frequent with a warming climate.  So can we say that climate change is negatively impacting these animals?  Turns out we can’t, at least not yet.  If this were to be so then our data is telling us that the 1996-1997 season was a really healthy one where clouds of pollution parted and nature rejoiced.  Did the 2010 season then become a post apocalyptic blade-runner-esque world where acid rain melted the orange off of butterfly wings?  Clearly not.  Neither climate nor pollution were drastically different in those years.  The monarchs just had a really good year followed by some really bad ones.  Maybe we should just find a better canary if we’re trying to blow the whistle on global warming or deforestation.

As a last thought here is a video from the above story.  Just as you’d expect, it’s over dramatized and a bit hilarious.