SchoolsEstela RomeroDecember 17, 2021

Celebrating Monarchs, Christmas and New Year!

SchoolsEstela RomeroDecember 17, 2021

THE VISIT

“Pedro Ascencio” Elementary

“Garatachea” Village

S t a t e o f M é x i c o

“Sierra Chincua” Sanctuary

Coordinates: 19.6559777 -100.2714691

Monarch butterflies seem to capriciously choose their hibernation spots in central México settling right at the border of two central states: the state of Michoacán and the state of México. Each state identifies itself with a massive arch across the main road that includes a welcoming message.

The fact that monarchs occupy land, Oyamel forest areas and water springs belonging to both entities, obliges local and state authorities from both parties, as well as, Ejidatario families living in the core and buffer forest areas throughout the Reserve, to reach optimal organization and agreements. In this manner, monarchs are provided with the ideal conserved habitat at their arrival and the duties and benefits of this magnificent phenomenon are shared.

Monarchs wake an important social, economical and political movement in our communities.

Your Ambassador Monarchs now head north to be delivered at everyone of the schools surrounding the second of the three largest hibernating colonies, “Sierra Chincua” Sanctuary.

The Symbolic Migration successfully delivered its message on “the importance of trees” and ended in explaining the function of the forest, which children loved!

“I wonder whether mom and dad and grandpas know how rain happens!”

“We thought it was TREES which produced water themselves!”

“What? We have the largest Oyamel tree forests in the world?”

“So tourists flying in a plane from so far away come and see how it is like here where monarch butterflies spend the winter?”

…students kept commenting surprised at learning facts they found amazing.

Students receiving your Ambassador Monarchs at “Pedro Ascencio” Elementary, located right at the entrance to the core of “Sierra Chincua” Sanctuary, took their beautiful Ambassadors to the school library forming a large cluster on the wall just as real monarchs do at the large Oyamel forests just a couple of kilometers behind of the tiny beautiful “Garatachea” village.

Outside at the school yard, the noise of teachers, of moms and a few dads and students breaking Piñatas, singing traditional Christmas songs, playing games and enjoying delicious Pozole and Tostadas, welcomed Christmas and bid farewell to the ending year.

Hundreds of children at the schools surrounding the monarch colonies still await their Ambassador butterflies and their conservation lessons at the return to schools in 2022, as we all shall witness the peak of a wonderful monarch butterfly winter time in our region.

This Methuselah monarch generation witness time slowly transitioning from the ending year into the new year for humans while time itself marks a faster pace for the nature of their own miraculous life cycle.