From folklore to tattoos, butterflies enjoy fame, recognition and love like no other insect. Lepidoptera (the family of moths and butterflies) are seen as graceful, elegant and emissaries of the divine. Butterflies do not carry deadly (to human) disease, sting, or feast on rotting flesh, yet the butterfly’s place in the human heart has not spared the destruction of its habitat, the pollution of its air or the endangerment of its wintering grounds. The survival of the monarch, however beloved, is now delicately linked to the preservation of its habitat, migration routes, and limited wintering grounds.

Transformation and development

Adult monarchs (or Danaus plexippus) deposit their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves. Depending upon temperature, the eggs hatch in three to twelve days. The larvae feed on the plant leaves for about two weeks (the milkweed, while edible to the caterpillar, is a toxin and renders the caterpillar poisonous to potential predators), developing into chubby caterpillars. After attaching themselves head down to a convenient twig, they shed their outer skin and begin the transformation into a pupa (or chrysalis), a process which is completed in a matter of hours.

For approximately two weeks, the caterpillar stays packed within the green case of the chrysalis as its body completes its genesis into a butterfly. Emerging from its case, the butterfly waits until its wings stiffen and dry before it ventures off in search of its new food—flower nectar.

Mass migration

Unlike most other insects in temperate regions, monarch butterflies cannot survive a long cold winter. Like birds, the monarch follows a pattern of seasonal migration. Each autumn millions of these butterflies leave their breeding grounds and fly to wintering sites– monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains travel to small groves of trees along the California coast, while those in the central United States fly farther south to the pine forests of eastern Michoacan in central Mexico. In all of these sites butterflies coat trees in quivering coats of gold and orange, in colonies of up to 20 million individuals. Incredibly the monarchs return to the same roosting grounds every year, often to the very same trees!

Conservation, challenges and an undecided future

Monarchs and their spectacular seasonal migration are seriously threatened by human activities—primarily the destruction of their forest hibernation grounds and their summer habitats. Road construction, housing developments, deforestation, and agricultural expansion are all working to destroy the places the monarchs depend on, and the plants they need to survive.

Rare, Ninos y Crias (a Mexican conservation organization), and the University of Guadalajara are currently working with the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve in Michoacan, Mexico to help save the monarch’s wintering grounds. The reserve is under constant threat from agricultural development, unsustainable tourism, and other development pressures. Alejandra Hinojosa Mendoza, a conservationist and employee of the reserve is currently running a Pride campaign in and around the biosphere. The campaign is using the monarch as a symbol to build support and pride for the butterfly in local communities. At the end of the coming year, Alejandra’s hard work will have hopefully resulted in the creation of a powerful new voice for the preservation and protection of the monarch– right where it needs it most.

Soaring temples and dramatic plazas, dating from 600 BC to 900 AD, rise dramatically from a vast swath of tropical forest. Ocellated Turkeys wander along ancient Mayan footpaths, Red Macaws and Crested Eagles flap through the canopy, and mantled howler monkeys, jaguars, and three-toed sloths depend on the thick forest for food and cover.

For the first time since Tikal National Park was founded in 1955, there are community-based nature guides to interpret for travelers and locals alike the value of Tikal as one of Central America’s ecological touchstones.

Born and raised in the communities surrounding the park, none of the 12 RARE-trained guides had attended university and few had finished primary school. But this group will be the first corps of guides licensed by the Guatemalan government to work in Tikal (and the entire Guatemalan state of Peten) that have not received specialized degrees. Until this year, Tikal guides came almost exclusively, from the capital city to snap up jobs giving archeological tours of the park. Until now, there were neither opportunities for local guides in the park nor a determined interest on behalf of local communities to maintain the ecological wealth of the region.

Diego Hernandez, from the neighboring town of Zocotzal and a graduate of RARE’sNature Guide Training Program in Tikal, did not have the opportunity to finish primary school and began working at a very young age. Before he took the course he depended upon gathering xate (a threatened species of jade palm used in the international floral industry) to care for his large family.

“My new job in Tikal is beautiful,” say Hernandez who now guides and does biological monitoring in the park, supplemented by farming his family’s field. “I used to collect xate almost exclusively, but I have left that now for good. The NGTP course was a great window of opportunity for me.”

At dusk, the mountains of Indonesia’s Komodo National Park look like temples reaching towards the sky. What local conservationist Hesti Widodo realizes-and what she hopes to make others aware of-is that the mountains of Komodo, as well as its grasslands and waters, are temples, receptacles of the earth’s most precious gifts.

Her mission is urgent: Komodo’s remarkable plant and animal resources are being depleted by wildlife poaching and even blast fishing (the practice of using dynamite that kills not only fish but vast amounts of coral and other organisms). It is these threats and others, caused in part by a lack of environmental awareness, that Hesti will tackle, working with Rare and The Nature Conservancy on a Pride campaign beginning this fall.

Hesti explains, “I’d like to see people have more understanding about the importance of their environment and how it links with their lives.”

Komodo National Park, a World Heritage site and part of a four-year Rare-United Nations project to develop ways to use ecotourism to support conservation and community development, is an ideal setting for a Pride Campaign. Hiding in the crevices of Komodo’s mountains, its broad savannahs, and below the surface of its clear waters are some of the world’s threatened plant and animal species: water buffalo and Timor deer, manatees and manta rays, more than a 1,000 species of tropical fish, fragile corals, and the famed Komodo Dragon.

There are also 4,000 people living in and around the park who depend upon these resources for their survival. Through this project, Rare is working to create new sources of employment through ecotourism that are both healthier for the park and more profitable for struggling communities. Major partners in this project include the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Foundation, Aveda Corporation, Komodo National Park, and The Nature Conservancy.

Hesti is considering three candidates for the focus of her Pride campaign, a grassroots marketing project which will employ everything from puppet shows to music videos to build community awareness of the environment: the Komodo Dragon, a twelve foot long meat-eating lizard; the manta ray, whose flat form can be seen gliding underneath the surface of Komodo’s waters; and the dugong, or “sea cow,” a relative of the manatee.

“I am excited,” says Hesti, who is currently at Rare’s Conservation Education training center at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, “to return to Komodo and do an amazing campaign, which will see the good result of change in the attitude and mind set of the local community toward sustainable resources and management of the park.”