With its native wildflowers, paved bicycle path, and two small lakes, Ohio’s Sylvan Prairie Park could not appear like a lot to outsiders. However for seventh-grade trainer Stacey Leffler, this small, school-side nature protect has been life-changing. Leffler teaches science at Timberstone Junior Excessive College in Sylvania, Ohio, and as a part of an annual endangered species mission, encourages her college students to decide on an endangered species they’d like to review.
When a number of of them confirmed curiosity in monarch butterflies—a winged insect then listed as “endangered” on the IUCN Crimson Listing of Threatened Species on account of habitat destruction and local weather change—Leffler realized that she had the proper studying grounds at her disposal. That’s as a result of frequent milkweed, the host plant for monarch caterpillars, is a Sylvan Prairie Park staple. The park and its milkweed quickly turned a vital a part of the trainer’s personal life sciences curriculum. In flip, it additionally opened up Leffler to a complete new world of risk.
Midwest prairie full of milkweed crops
Primarily based on her work involving monarch butterflies, Leffler was considered one of two environmental educators chosen as recipients of Pure Habitat Adventures 2023 Monarch Butterfly Scholarship Grant. The award included an area on considered one of Nat Hab’s 2024 Kingdom of the Monarchs adventures (a $4795 worth), in addition to free round-trip airfare and the possibility to witness hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies roosting inside Central Mexico’s forested highlands.
In line with Nat Hab, “It was a wildly aggressive 12 months, however Stacey actually stood out as top-of-the-line candidates we’ve had in our monarch scholarship program up to now. She represents a rare mixture of previous work and excellent future potential to help in monarch training and conservation.”
Leffler’s ardour for endangered species—and monarch butterflies particularly—in addition to her engagement in lively conservation made the seventh-grade trainer a simple frontrunner. Over the previous couple of years, Leffler’s been integrating monarch biology into her prolonged classroom by educating college students in regards to the significance of milkweed within the monarch butterfly’s life cycle, together with the significance of pollinators. Collectively, their actions embrace accumulating milkweed seeds from Sylvan Prairie Park, establishing a nursery to actively study seed germination and progress circumstances., and even incorporating milkweed into their dwelling landscapes, selling environmental stewardship. By means of all of it, the scholars are gaining a better appreciation for nature and the significance of environmental duty, particularly in the case of the conservation of monarchs.
Monarch butterfly chrysalis hanging from a milkweed plant
The Highway to Mexico
When Leffler came upon in regards to the scholarship by an e-mail, her first thought was, “This sounds superb! I may see that it was match for me and could be a actually nice expertise,” she says, “and one which I’d been capable of share with others.” Leffler despatched out her utility after which moved on. It wasn’t till Nat Hab reached out and requested her to observe up the applying with a video that Leffler realized, “I truly have a shot at this.”
So when a name got here in that she would have one final on-line interview, Leffler set to work studying all the things extra she may about Nat Hab, World Wildlife Fund, and the monarch butterfly migration. “Besides the one query that the Nat Hab crew requested me,” she says, “was ‘will you be out there to journey on these explicit dates?’ I instructed them that I’ve my passport prepared and will be packed in a second!”
Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Expertise
In mid-January, Leffler joined 12 different vacationers (“They have been a number of the most inspirational, superior individuals I’ve ever met,” she says) on a six-day expedition to expertise Mexico’s monarch kingdom. Led by two of Nat Hab’s knowledgeable pure guides, the small group journeyed by way of horseback into the nation’s central mountains, visiting each the El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary and the marginally smaller Sierra Chincua Sanctuary.
Right here within the highlands, hundreds of thousands of monarchs cluster tightly collectively alongside the branches of Oyamel fir timber, creating a surprising show of orange and black that—when nonetheless—resembles sensible autumn foliage. “However as quickly because the solar comes out and the monarchs heat, they’ll begin flying,” says Leffler. “It’s surreal,” Leffler says. Butterflies have been touchdown in her hair and alongside her arms and fluttering throughout the group, their wings flapping collectively so loudly it was like listening to a waterfall.
“In Ohio, we’d see 20 to 30 monarchs flying across the wildflowers,” she says. “However at every sanctuary we visited, we most likely noticed 4 million. The entire expertise was simply superb.” North America’s japanese inhabitants of monarch butterflies (together with these Leffler sees in Ohio) overwinter on the identical 11 to 12 remoted mountaintops in central Mexico yearly.
Nonetheless, solely two-percent of the nation’s unique oyamel forest—a local forest ecosystem that solely grows in altitudes between 7,874 and 11,811 toes—stays. All through their go to, Leffler and her group realized first-hand about what WWF–Mexico is doing alongside native communities to shield this fragile and endangered habitat, the place forest degradation can have critical penalties.
“It’s simply so flabbergasting to assume that this little insect could make all of it this fashion from Ohio all the way in which all the way down to Mexico having by no means been there earlier than,” says Leffler, “after which as soon as they arrive, they discover the precise place and timber alongside all the opposite monarchs. It completely blows my thoughts.”
The Takeaway
Leffler stored her college students up to date all through the journey with movies and posts in order that they might observe alongside, however says it was truly adults who had essentially the most questions. The truth is, her expertise in Mexico has led to a talking engagement at an area park, in addition to an invite to be on the Sylvania Tree Fee.
“Successful the scholarship has been an incredible catalyst for me to make a distinction in my group,” says Leffler.
This spring, in partnership with the Toledo Zoo, Timberstone Junior Excessive College is even including a prairie plot to its property. Leffler will likely be planting it with milkweed and different native species to offer a pure habitat for the migrating monarchs and an extra studying house for her college students.
“The butterflies have been completely breathtaking,” says Leffler, “however my largest takeaway from the journey is absolutely the awe of nature, how superb it’s, and the way a lot there’s to be taught from it. Then there’s all the things that’s transpired due to this expertise. Actually, I’m simply so grateful.”
You’ll be able to observe Leffler on her YouTube channel, “Science With Stacey” (@Sciencewithstacey).
© Stephen Hollenberg
