This film follows the yearly migration of some 50 million butterflies in an ultralight plane decorated with the colors of the Monarch Butterfly from Canada to Mexico. It is full of aerial shots, animations and interesting people. A great family documentary which wishes to create awareness about the Monarchs plight.

Each year millions of monarch butterflies spread all over North America converge on small forests in the mountains of Mexico. In 2005, the butterflies had company — Francisco Gutierrez. He followed the monarchs’ migration in a 33-foot wide utralight airplane. Read the article on the NPR website.

This timely post from the Texas Butterfly Ranch blog shares the adventures of Monika Maeckle and her husband Robert Rivard as they make an ambitious climb up Cerro Pelón to view returning Monarch Butterflies. Read the full story.

ButterBike is the fourth project of Beyond a Book, an organization that uses the experiences of real life adventurers to engage students and bring curriculum to life. ButterBike connects the monarch’s story to students though classroom presentations, field trips, videos, conservation and more.Learn more about ButterBike and Sara Dykman on the Beyond a Book website.

Thanks to our unusually warm fall, Monarch butterflies, normally winging their way to Mexico for the winter by late September, were still in northern areas in late October. Scientists say tens of thousands of the butterflies are likely to be stranded far north of where they’d normally be this time of year because of the unusually warm weather and strong winds that have kept them from migrating south. Read the article on the StarTribune website.

The largest insect migration in the world ends each year in Michoacán, Mexico. Millions of monarch butterflies travel from the United States and Canada to pass the cold months in the towering trees of this beautiful forest. On their journey, the butterflies travel around 2,800 miles.

Orley R. “Chip” Taylor Founder and Director of Monarch Watch; Professor Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Trained as an insect ecologist, Chip Taylor has published papers on species assemblages, hybridization, reproductive biology, population dynamics and plant demographics and pollination. Starting in 1974, Chip Taylor established research sites and directed students studying Neotropical African honey bees (killer bees) in French Guiana, Venezuela, and Mexico. In 1992, Taylor founded Monarch Watch, an outreach program focused on education, research and conservation relative to monarch butterflies. Since then, Monarch Watch has enlisted the help of [...]