I last seriously worked on Monarch butterflies back in the last century when a billion of the glorious creatures roamed the eastern US. Ironically though, in the late 1970s and 1980s I was working on a seriously declining population of (introduced) Monarchs in eastern Australia. Further back in the 1960s overwintering populations in the Sydney area numbered in the tens of thousands at each of a dozen or so sites but by the time I began my research in 1978 each of these sites barely hosted 2-3,000 monarchs. During 1978-85 I studied Australian Monarchs which resulted in my PhD and 14 scientific papers, all summarized in a review paper on Monarch migration biology presented to the second MONCON conference held in Los Angeles in 1986 (James 1993). The upshot of my work was that the Australian Monarch had subtly adapted to Australian conditions in its little more than a century of occupying the land Down Under. Most notable was the absence of a true reproductive diapause and the existence of more flexible reproductive strategies compared to North American Monarchs. This made good sense because nowhere in Australia is the need to escape winter as desperate as it is in say Minnesota or Chicago. Monarchs can survive in most parts of Australia during winter but flying to the coast could make things a little more comfortable. So a more flexible ‘decision-making’ process evolved whereby Australian Monarchs literally check the weather after eclosion and make their decision to migrate or not on whether it’s warm or cold! Daylength seems to have little to do with the decision.

Fast-forward to 1999 and I exchange the land Down Under for the ‘outback’ of Washington State, that is, the arid part east of the Cascades. This ‘outback’ unlike the Australian version is not an acceptable home for Monarchs during winter with temperatures commonly remaining below freezing for weeks at a time. Washington is part of the summer range of North American Monarchs though and I was happy to see a few in the height of summer each year but disappointed not to see them ‘everywhere’ as I thought they might be. ‘Old-timers’ told me they did used to be ‘everywhere’ in the old days…..

As I wrestled with the problems of solving insect and mite problems in eastern Washington irrigated agriculture by using less pesticide and more biocontrol (my day job), I pondered on the possibilities of working with Monarchs again. I was surprised to learn that in contrast to the thousands of Monarchs that had been tagged for decades in the eastern US to work out migration routes, virtually none had been tagged in the Pacific Northwest! Yet the idea that PNW Monarchs migrate to coastal California for overwintering was very much an accepted ‘fact’. It was easy to see why wild Monarchs had not been tagged in the PNW.. there were hardly any that you could tag.. just one or two each year on your Buddleia bush if you were lucky! And of course there are fewer human beings per square mile in the PNW than just about any- where else in the lower 48 states. Clearly there was a need to tag Monarchs in the PNW and get some data to support the notion that they all spend their winter vacation in California!

Bob Pyle was the first lepidopterist to welcome me to Washington and it wasn’t long before I was reading his book “Chasing Monarchs” (Pyle 1999) which entertainingly documents his autumn of 1996 following Monarchs from British Columbia to Mexico. One of the discoveries he made was that not all apparently migrating Monarchs in the PNW head towards the California coast.

Many of his observations indicated that a significant number flew southeast, putting them on a different track entirely, one that could end up with them arriving in Mexico. So we really did need to tag PNW Monarchs to determine their overwintering grounds!

Monarch tagging was not a priority for me from 2000-2012 but I did monitor the incidence and abundance of Monarchs in the PNW. I solicited and gathered online reports of Monarchs in the PNW from 2005-15 and until 2014 the number of reports did not exceed 20 per season. No Monarchs were reported in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

Clearly these kinds of numbers are unlikely to support a significant tagging program. With considerable effort I could probably find and tag maybe 25 Monarchs during July-August. If I established a network of ten like-minded citizen scientists then maybe we could tag up to 200? If we did this for a decade, perhaps we would get 10 recovery data points?

As I pondered this mildly depressing scenario I received an email from Dr. Tamara Russell, Clinical Director of the Residential Mental Health Unit at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, who wondered if I had a project that could involve inmates in rearing butterflies? The Sustainability in Prisons Project, a collaboration between The Evergreen State College and the state Dept. of Corrections, was already successful at connecting prisons with nature through rearing captive-bred endangered Oregon Spotted Frogs and Taylor’s Checkerspot butterflies, and I immediately saw that prison rearing of Monarchs could be the answer to my problem of getting sufficient numbers of Monarchs tagged to yield worthwhile data! Incarcerated Citizen Scientists indeed!

Thus was born the Washington State University-Washington State Penitentiary partnership that has seen almost 10,000 Monarchs reared, tagged and released by prison inmates during the past four years . It is important to note that all of these reared Monarchs originated from locally caught wild Washington female Monarchs, so in effect the prisoners simply ensured that the substantial natural mortality which occurs in wild populations did not occur in protective custody caterpillars. It is a cliché but the prisoners had ‘time on their hands’ which they invested in providing the best care possible for their caterpillars and chrysalids. In 2012, they produced an astonishing 85% survival rate in Monarch caterpillars given to them as first instars! The in- mates spent every moment they could with their caterpillars: feeding them, removing frass as it fell and generally making sure that every individual had the best chance of making it to an adult Monarch.

So who are these inmates and why do they do such a great job of rearing Monarchs? Most of these guys are the worst of the worst. They are the highest risk prisoners and are held in close and protective custody. Many are murderers, life prisoners with no chance of release. You might think that these poor examples of human beings deserve nothing except misery and contempt and we should not give them a second thought. However, the reality is that they are living human beings that we as a society have chosen to maintain and look after, if not care for. So we have a responsibility to help them get through their lives in a way that is humane. These guys awaken everyday to an existence with rarely anything to look forward to and consequently the angst they feel frequently results in problems which impacts everyone around them, prisoners and warders alike. The Monarch program changes that, it gives them something to look forward to. Monarchs literally weave their magic on the mental health of these inmates, helping alleviate depression. Monarchs give them focus and a purpose to their lives, they are involved in something bigger than them- selves that has meaning. Rearing Monarchs makes these guys think about themselves. Many of them look at the metamorphosis they see the Monarchs undergoing as something they can do…shedding the past to become something new. At least one of the original ‘butterfly wranglers’ as they call themselves, has actually improved his life a little. Not a ‘lifer’, he has transferred to a lower security prison where he is taking tertiary studies and he credits the Monarch rearing experience as the motivating factor!

So the Penitentiary Monarch rearing program clearly has substantial mental health benefits for the participants as well as having a major impact on prison harmony. There is a waiting list to get on the Monarch program and you need to be a well-behaved prisoner to be considered for the program. The benefits to Monarch science are also accumulating. Six penitentiary-reared Monarchs have now been recovered after having flown distances of 432 to 830 miles from the prison! I can imagine inmates traveling every one of these miles in their minds….. Five of these Monarchs turned up on the California coast in overwintering colonies at Santa Barbara, Morro Bay and Santa Cruz. Another was found in a very small colony in some trees adjacent to a shopping mall south of San Francisco! The most intriguing recovery was one that traveled to Brigham City, Utah, this Monarch was clearly not interested in the delights of California….. The inmates love hearing about these recoveries!

Together with additional recoveries of other citizen-scientist tagged Monarchs in the PNW, the penitentiary recoveries are rapidly helping to improve our understanding of Monarch migration in the PNW. The jury is still out as to whether some PNW Monarchs go to Mexico instead of California but the penitentiary-tagged Monarch that turned up in Utah is tantalizing evidence that some indeed do take this route. Our ongoing partnership with the inmates at Walla Walla is destined to ultimately provide the scientific data that will confirm or refute the Mexico hypothesis. And thanks to all of the citizen scientists involved in this project, incarcerated or not, this is a self-sustaining research project, operating without a cent of external grant funding! This is a remarkable achievement for this day and age.

I have known for a long time the magical effect Monarchs have on children when they are able to hold them and see them in all their close-up glory. I had no idea though that this magic extends to the other end of the human spectrum! Just more evidence I guess of the calming influence of nature’s colorful ambassadors on our restless human souls.

For more information on the program visit our Facebook page ‘Monarch butterflies in the Pacific Northwest‘ .

James, D.G. (1993). Migration Biology of the Monarch butterfly in Australia. In Biology and Conservation of the Monarch butterfly pp. 189-200 Eds. S. Malcolm and M. Zalucki. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Pyle, R.M.P. 1999. Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the butterflies of passage. Houghton Mifflin Co. New York.

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