Document text
Talent woman lucky with monarch butterflies By Morgan Rothborne Dec 10, 2022 01:00 AM A A A monarch tagged by Belinda Vos hangs out in a patch of milkweed in her Talent garden. Butterflies released by Vos are found at mysteriously high rates compared with other monarch advocates. [courtesy photo] Belinda Vos reared 394 monarch butterflies last summer, but it’s not the number of butterflies she raises that is noteworthy. It’s the number that survive the rigors of migration that sets her apart from other monarch aficionados. The normal rate of recovery for a tagged butterfly released in Southern Oregon is between 0.04% and 0.09%, said David James, an associate professor of entomology at Washington State University. Vos has a recovery rate of 1.4% for her butterflies — a mysteriously high rate. Three of Belinda’s butterflies already have been found in monarch overwintering sites in Southern California. That number may seem small, but in the world of monarch advocates, it’s remarkable. “Basically it works out that you have to tag 200 or more butterflies to get one recovery,” said James. “There have been a few others who have unusual success like Belinda, but I can’t find any correlation between them — any reason why they should have any more success than anyone else.” Every year, butterflies released by volunteers like Vos are found by Californians in gardens, parks and landscaped corners of parking lots. If researchers are lucky, whoever finds a tagged monarch will snap a photo and send it to the information on the tag. Then James compiles the data and combines it with his own eyewitness observations. James was fresh from his annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to overwintering monarch sites in Southern California, where he was able to locate one of Belinda’s butterflies — G7792 — within a cluster high up in a eucalyptus tree. He posted the sighting on the Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates Facebook page. To wait out the winter, monarch butterflies crowd together in clusters on a few trees in select areas of Santa Cruz, California, and occasionally as far south as Santa Barbara or Los Angeles, he said. “It’s an awe-inspiring sight. To see 10,000, even 20,000 butterflies on just a few trees. When the sun comes out, they will fly around a little. You look up in the sky, and there’s just butterflies everywhere. It’s beautiful,” he said. After a frightening slump in population from 2018 to 2021, this year the numbers of successful migrants are back to healthy levels, James said. A healthy population is at the heart of Vos’ dedicated work, she explained. When she was a child growing up in the Rogue Valley, monarchs were everywhere. “As kids we would catch the caterpillars and bring them inside, raise them in jars and release them,” she said. Decades later, she learned their populations were declining, and the monarch was on its way to becoming a threatened species. “I started to catch them and bring them in and raise them again, with the grandchildren. They were younger then, and we had a good time doing that,” she said. When she learned about the Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates, she got involved with what she described as a loose organization. There is no signing up or joining, only those with a curiosity and a love for these insects connecting with each other, especially around the group’s Facebook page, where photos of tagged butterflies are posted as they are found. Those willing to rear and release monarchs are given tags for the butterflies. In her rearing and releasing of tagged butterflies, Vos is meticulous. “I do what I call protective rearing. In the summer, I’m out in the garden all the time. I have lots of native narrowleaf milkweed growing here. When I find the eggs, I bring them inside and carefully rear them,” she explained. “Only 2%-3% of the eggs make it to an adult naturally. Eggs are good food for anybody,” she said. The females will lay eggs only on milkweed, she said, and milkweed is all the caterpillars will eat. Vos and her husband, Bob, have lived in the foothills of Talent for more than 30 years, she said. She has added to the native milkweed already growing on their property and added more nectar plants to buttress the pollinator population overall, which helps attract female monarchs in the first place. She credits her success in rearing monarchs to giving the butterflies a good start in life. The abundance of their singular source of caterpillar food helps Vos raise a high number of healthy butterflies. Since 2017, she has reared and released 1,306 butterflies. When she finds the eggs, she snips the stem from the plant and brings it inside. The sprig of milkweed goes into a jar of water until the caterpillars hatch, then she looks after them like a mother of a newborn. “You have to clean them every day. Caterpillars eat, and they poop — though I think it’s called ‘frass’, not poop. But still you have to keep their jar clean. I have to feed them every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” she said. The caterpillars are sociable and sometimes fight with each other, she said. The bigger they get, the more they eat. After three weeks, the boisterous little caterpillars disappear into their chrysalis. Then it’s time to wait for the butterfly to emerge. After it steps out into the world, it takes a couple of hours before the wings are strong enough to apply the tag. “Once they’re released, often they hang out for a while. And then they fly off, and you never know if you’ll see them again,” she said. From the data accumulated through volunteers like Vos, research papers have been written and hypotheses confirmed about the route monarchs take from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California, James said. It’s a useful tool for keeping an eye on the insects’ population. “This project is totally citizen-science based. Without them, we couldn’t do it. We have no extra funding; it’s all up to the people that actually rear and release,” James said. Vos advised those hoping to help with monarchs next summer to do some research and contact Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates at facebook.com/somonarchs . Reach Mail Tribune reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected] or 541-776-4487. Follow her on Twitter @MRothborne. Bob and Melinda Vos of Talent [courtesy photo]