Flying With the Butterflies, To Let Them Be

from "To Save Endangered Butterfly, Become a Butterfly"
New York Times

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

"Sometimes I felt like a butterfly, not a man," said the curly-haired, blue-eyed Francisco 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."

He had traveled more than 4,375 miles from Montreal to Michoacán State, following the monarch 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.

The first waves of butterflies were fluttering into the dense fir forests here as Mr. Gutiérrez landed to a hero's welcome from two governors, representatives of the United States and Canadian governments, several government officials, dozens of school children dressed as butterflies, native American dancers and a Mazahua Indian chief.

The chief, Margarito Sánchez Valdez, bathed the aviator in incense, wreathed his neck with marigolds and blessed him in the name of Shefi, a butterfly spirit, and Mysyohimi, the Mazahua's supreme deity.

Omar Vidal, the director of the Mexico office of the World Wildlife Fund, acknowledged that the flight was a publicity stunt, but one with the best intention: to call attention to the plight of the monarchs. Illegal logging continues to eat away at the preserves where the butterfly winters. Pesticides in the United States and Canada wipe out the milkweed on which the insect feeds and lays its eggs. Hard winters that some scientists believe are linked to climate changes caused by greenhouse gases have decimated the butterflies in Mexico.

The monarch's annual migration is a natural mystery. In August, as the days shorten, the butterflies go into sexual hibernation. Then they fly down to Mexico, returning always to the same forested hills in Michoacán, where they find the perfect balance of coolness and humidity to remain alive for several months. Finally, in March, they return to the southern United States, lay their eggs and die.

Their offspring then wend their way northward with the sun, going through a number of generations during the summer, until the last generation senses a hint of winter in the air in August and begins the long return to Mexico.

"The first and still the most important end of the flight was to call attention and raise the awareness of all people about the marvel of this migration," Mr. Vidal said. "It's a unique phenomenon in the insect world."

After six years of trying, Mr. Gutiérrez, who is 44, had almost given up finding sponsors for his project, except for the World Wildlife Fund. Then in June, Gov. Lázaro Cárdenas Batel of Michoacán suddenly decided to back the idea. Mexico's telephone giant, Telcel, also donated some money.

One of the high points of the flight came early on Sept. 6, when Mr. Gutiérrez flew his ultralight, Papalotzin, an indigenous word for the monarch, over Niagara Falls with a cloud of butterflies beneath him.

Mr. Gutiérrez said the butterflies fly much like gliders, using updrafts to climb to between 4,500 and 5,000 feet, then taking advantage of winds to help them on their way. They can travel as much as 90 miles a day.

Their sense of navigation is astonishing, he said. When they enter Mexico, the butterflies rise as high as 13,000 feet as they head toward the highlands. He followed groups of the insects throughout the journey, over Niagara Falls, down to New York City, and to Washington. He then traveled southwest to Oklahoma, then south through Texas and into Mexico, through all kinds of weather, hunkering down when the butterflies did.

Along the way, he met with leading butterfly experts and artists and environmentalists fascinated by the migration. Though he and his ground crew had planned only three events along the route, he received dozens of requests to land. The trip was filmed for a documentary.

While Mr. Gutiérrez's landing here generated a sense of good will toward the butterflies, environmentalists and local political leaders say the struggle between the government and the loggers is far from over. The pace of logging has slowed but the cutting continues, they said.

The World Wildlife Foundation has set up a $6.5 million fund to pay people living around the butterfly reserves to report on logging rather than harvesting trees. Most of the sanctuaries are part of large tracts, known as ejidos, owned jointly by their residents. But the loggers also bribe local officials and farmers.

Some people take money from both sides and allow the logging to continue in any case. Satellite photos compiled by United States scientists show vast reaches of the 138,000-acre reserve have been logged and cleared, often by armed gangs who pay off the authorities.

Mr. Vidal 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.

"You have to offer a different way of making money to the landlords," Mr. Vidal said. "The vigilance payments alone are not enough."

Mr. Gutiérrez, whose father, Agustín, was a famous stunt pilot and skydiver, said he did not consider his journey to be a major feat of aviation, nothing like Brian Milton's 1998 flight around the world in an ultralight. He said he undertook the trip only to dramatize the need for all three countries to cooperate to save the butterfly. He used his moment in the limelight to emphasize that pesticides in the United States have done as much to harm to the insects as has deforestation in Michoacán.