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Environmental writer traces 'amazing' path of monarch butterflies By
Liz Bellessa
Robert Michael Pyle / Photo by Liz Bellessa One of the most remarkable insects is the monarch butterfly, which is undoubtedly the most beautiful of its kind. Robert Michael Pyle has tracked the monarch butterflies in their migratory pattern all the way from the western United States to the forests of Mexico. Pyle, a native of Colorado, noticed as a boy that the monarch butterflies would always come and go over the Rockies the same way. As a free-lance writer today, Pyle writes books on many topics, but one book of note is Chasing Monarchs, which deals with him following the monarchs and their migratory pattern. He introduced his latest book, Butterflies of Cascadia, Thursday at the O.C. Tanner Symposium at USU. The symposium, "The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education," continues through Saturday at the Eccles Conference Center. The most amazing thing about monarchs, Pyle said, is how "fascinating these insects are that they travel 2,000 to 3,000 miles just to follow their migration route." Even the offspring of the monarchs who do this repeat over and over again flying to the forests of Mexico and back to their homes in the western United States, Pyle said. However, all the logging of the forests in Mexico it is killing off a great part of the monarch population. Monarchs, Pyle said, have to stay cold enough to store their fat for food in the winter, but stay warm enough to stay alive. Pyle said that more than 50 percent of the monarchs have died, but they will replenish over the summer. If the monarchs have plenty of water, good weather, and not a lot of chemicals from the plants that they eat, they should thrive, Pyle said. Recently Pyle received a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation of Biology.
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