SchoolsEstela RomeroJanuary 12, 2020

Leaving Macheros, at Cerro Pelón!

SchoolsEstela RomeroJanuary 12, 2020

SCHOOL VISIT.-

The moment came to visit the high school level students in the tiny village. The season is just starting its peak, and families, students and teachers have a big smile on their faces, since many, many local and foreign visitors will tour in this Sanctuary as one among the three most important from the total five in the region. Due to its elevation, (average 2,200 meters), not only monarchs can be seen here, but a considerable variety of birds and insects; this shall be the right place for bird watchers, and during the raining season, mushrooms collection can be a real experience. It is highly important to visit students at this level, since they are so much more aware of and experiencing the global climate change just happening in our planet… there is a point now in the community, where they can go and catch some wi-fi signal, so they get informed about somethings going on worldwide. “We are particularly impressed about what is happening in Australia with the terrible fires going on; we ourselves can tell about the climate change here; my parents and many families nearly lost our crops this past spring and summer due to the lack of intense rain; this would have been a terrible financial affectation in many of our families; we do a main part of our living from that ”; —Nora, one of the girls in the class said—. .”And now, we can see that the solil is very little humid, and one of our teachers told us that insects are very sensible to humidity levels; Monarchs are insects, so, they someday go elsewhere, say, in case of Monarchs, if they arrive to their traditional overwintering spots not finding moisture enough to stay?”, —this question from Alejandro, another student in the class, left the class in total silence; what a question to reflect on—. “This can also happen to Salamandras with low water levels, to toads, frogs, bees, wasps, bats… if not blossoming enough of lowers for nectar, then no pollination, then less seeds and fruits and vegetables… then us humans would be in big trouble“. —Estela and the teachers joining the conversation with the students all came to wonderful exchange of opinions, and all agreeing that our ecosystems’ health and vital equilibrium all over the world need immediate and effective measures on conservation—. Playing the “Web of Life” game and writing their letters to their friends in the North, reassuring concepts like “Habitat”, as the key word to understand the interrelation of every element, flora and fauna in nature, inspired them and indeed touched them very deeply. “Please thank on our behalf to every school, of all the cities and states from where we are for the first time receiving our Ambassador Monarchs, from California to New York and Minessotta; wow, that seems so, so far away here in the maps… let them know we just cannot belive we have in our hands such a beatiful present coming from each of those far away places!. We need to speed up our lessons in English so that we could someday write a little bit of our letter in English!”, —the principal of the school, teacher Mario Antonio Domínguez, native and local painter to Macheros village, whose last wonderful painting on Monarchs welcomes every visitor at the main arch entrance of the community, commented very, very specially on behalf of his colleague teachers and his students—. For sure, one main step for the start in this change so urgently needed, is that our new generations, through education and sensibility, are just stepping into this new sense of responsibility. This shall be the main aim of the Symbolic Migration Project at knocking at the doors of every single school around each of the three main overwintering spots fo the Monarch butterflies in Central México.