By Justin Isherwood

This last season at the wintering site of the Monarch in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico, butterflies covered 6.05 hectares of those moist pine forests. There was fear for Monarch’s fate if another season saw a similar decline as the winter survey of 2016-17 with 2.48 hectares of over-wintering Monarchs.

The Monarch, like many other species, depends on a pattern of migration that is in itself a survival hazard. The average route of a Monarch is 4,000 miles. The wonder exits how this route came to be, beyond, whether Monarchs might be trained or conditioned to something less hazardous, say Texas or Louisiana roost site, or multiple sites. It is the intriguing nature of migration, to understand what forces are at work to cause the Monarch and other species their often long torturous routes?

Many species migrate. Over-wintering has multiple strategies, some migrations are short and some are long. Grey whales migrate 10,000-12,000 miles from the Mexican coast to the Arctic Sea. The arctic tern, a bird weighing 4 ounces, flies a route totaling 44,000 miles. A recent National Geographic study found this wisp of a bird flies twice as far in migration as previously thought. It continues to do this over the course of an average life span of 30 years. For you frequent fliers, air miles totaling 1.5 million. All from four ounces of avian zeal.

The Monarch holds a special place in our minds for its migration heroics; there are many others that accomplish similar feats. Six species of dragonflies fly 10,000 mile routes. Five species of leather back turtles swim 12,000 miles, the sooty shearwater is en route 200 days annually and flies a total of 40,000 miles, Pacific salmon migrate 2300 miles, caribou 3,100 miles, and our CW semi-palmated sandpiper flies 3,200miles.

Of 5,200 species of dragonflies, 50 migrate. The Northern Elephant Seal migrates from coastal California, where males and females follow different routes – males eat small sharks and rays, females prefer squid.

The distance from the Gulf of Alaska to southern California is 13,000 miles. The route of the Arctic tern goes from a summer in the Arctic circle via Europe and Africa, including feeding stops in mid-ocean, to summer again – this time in the Antarctic.

For most of us, the Monarch is the metaphor of migrating species, what we in Central Wisconsin see and interact with. I have long pondered what is my farm sector’s role in the support of the Monarch and other species? Ordinarily this business of agriculture is thought to be food and fiber. In the age of enormous volumetric farm surplus, and a seriously depressed economy, including an ever-increasing nitrate toxicity of the landscape, maybe it’s time to rethink American agriculture, as about something more than food and fiber.

Why not begin with the Monarchs? Simply put, lands set aside for habitat.

Those problematic fields returned to wetlands, to prairie and woods. If Ag could but recycle its problem fields, its corners, its edges, its slopes, its wetlands, sandy prairies, sand hills, low woods to milkweed and Monarchs and maybe a new version of prosperity that has too long been absent for the American farmer.