Long ago, back during a period that time has forgotten I made a posting regarding the politically-charged subject of the monarch butterfly and the protection thereof. </snark> The link to that dusty diary is here:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/5/5/21446/38769
It set forth a source of kits to cultivate one’s own monarch station to assist in their migration. The species has been suffering as of late largely due to habitat depletion.
Now, one brave individual has taken this idea one step further. He has actually painted his ultralight plane like a monarch and has migrated with the butterflies in an attempt to bring attention to their plight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/science/earth/08monarch.html?pagewanted=print
LLANO DE LAS PAPAS, Mexico, Nov. 3 – Francisco Gutiérrez has trouble expressing precisely when the idea came to him. It was six years ago and it crept up on him like the dawn, a connection between himself and the monarch butterfly.
As an expert hang glider and ultralight pilot from the mountains where the monarchs winter, he felt a strange kinship with them, and the notion of flying with them on their yearly migration from Canada to Mexico became first an itch, then an obsession, his family members said.
So when Mr. Gutiérrez wheeled his ultralight plane painted like a monarch over the butterfly sanctuary here at noon on Thursday and brought it swooping in to land on a stretch of mountain highway, it marked the rarest of human experiences, a dream come true.
The trek was no small feat, covering more than 4000 miles and 72 days. Starting in Canada, Mr. Gutiérrez made his way down to Mexico.
He had traveled more than 4,375 miles from Montreal to Michoacán State, following the butterflies at low altitude. He logged more than 90 hours of flying over 72 days, averaging about 60 miles a day, stopping dozens of times to talk to scientists and butterfly fanatics, in a feat of aviation meant to call attention to the insect’s precarious situation.
“Sometimes I felt like a butterfly, not a man,” said the curly-haired, blue-eyed Mr. Gutiérrez, who is known as Vico. “I can now feel what they face in some of the different parts of the Canada, the United States and Mexico.”
Mexican monarch habitat has been depleted at an alarming rate by logging interests.
Mr. Vidal (World Wildlife Fund) said the only solution was to teach people to make money from tourism in the densely forested mountains, not only during the winter butterfly season but in the summer
as well. A pilot project to do just that has been started in the most popular reserve, known as El Rosario.
The promotion of ecotourism will sustain the former loggers and save dwindling habitat for the monarch and other species. It is already used elsewhere, most notably in Africa. Here is a link to the Nature Conservancy’s page on ecotourism:
http://nature.org/aboutus/travel/ecotourism/
As a distinct form of tourism differing from traditional nature tourism and adventure travel, ecotourism provides funds for preserving land and water resources and the biodiversity they support.
Ecotourism minimizes environmental impacts, ecotourism incorporates ecologically sensitive architecture and land use design, and ecotourism offers local people opportunities for compatible economic development.
The Nature Conservancy works in conjunction with other groups, both public and private, to advance ecotourism. With increasing pressure on local habitat, this can provide a way to serve all interests.
