Transformational education

	TRR photo by Tracy Denman Alexander Der Katsch is pictured labeling monarch containers. (Click for larger image)

By TRACY DENMAN

MILANVILLE — Love and appreciation for all beings is a powerful thing. Ed Wesely not only appreciates local butterflies, but is sharing his concern for their conservation with second graders from the Damascus School.

Wesely and Barbara Yeaman have been running the Butterfly Barn in Milanville for five years. This spring, when Damascus second-graders brought along and released painted lady butterflies in their garden, the kids recited a little poem about respect for living things. Wesely was so impressed that he asked for volunteers to help him rear monarch butterflies at the Butterfly Barn during summer vacation.

Since late June, Luke Harrie, Kelsey Rutledge and Cassie Rutledge (who will be third-graders in the fall) have been cleaning caterpillar cages, and generally helping with the chores of raising more than 300 monarchs, many of them from eggs and caterpillars the kids discover on milkweed plants. Lately they’ve also been helping Wesely affix small tags before releasing the monarchs. (In February 2000, one of Wesely’s tagged monarchs was found in the El Rosario Monarch Preserve west of Mexico City, after a 2,255-mile flight the previous autumn.)

In addition to helping with the caterpillars, the kids have been performing a butterfly puppet show for visitors to the Butterfly Barn, at the Honesdale and Hawley libraries and at the Murray Tufts Manor Home near Narrowsburg.

The aim of this program is to help the monarch species—which suffers from logging of its wintering grounds in Mexico, and elimination of the milkweed plant in its summer range in the United States and southern Canada. Wesely feels that if current trends continue, the species will be greatly reduced, and possibly eliminated east of the Rocky Mountains.

	TRR photo by Tracy Denman Caterpillars feast on milkweed before forming a chrysalis. Others have already formed, as seen in the containers at the bottom left and third from left on the bottom row. (Click for larger image)

In the northeast egg-laying sites are highly vulnerable. Monarch eggs are laid only on milkweed plants (it’s the one food their larvae eat). Sadly for the monarch, a lot of milkweed grows along road rights-of-way, where the warm asphalt also attracts the butterflies. But when a roadside is mowed, the milkweed and its eggs and caterpillars are destroyed. That’s why Wesely spends a lot of time salvaging vulnerable eggs and larvae from rural roads, and from “weedy” parking lots in Honesdale.

Kelsy Rutledge has also learned to follow suit. Recently she and her mother collected monarch caterpillars from a milkweed patch that will be mowed in the fall, and placed the caterpillars on more distant, safer plants.

“A lot of times, the only way kids study insects is by killing them for an insect collection,” Wesely said. “Some teachers require this. But the kids have no way of knowing which species are common, and which ones are endangered. Let’s say I kill one monarch female for a collection. That’s about 300 eggs that will be lost. And this summer, with the monarch population at a low ebb, it would be doubly unfortunate.”

“Thanks to the kids, we’ll probably rear and release close to 500 monarchs, which will be a record for the Butterfly Barn. The monarchs hatching from late August into the fall will be critical for the entire population. That’s the generation that will migrate to Mexico and replenish the species next spring.

“The kids have been wonderful. Cassie, Kelsey and their mothers come each Wednesday morning—which is our agreed meeting day—and since early July they’ve been coming on other mornings, too. If I were sick one day, I’m certain that they could do the entire business of cage cleaning and record keeping,” Wesely said.

If others wish to help Wesely or learn more about the program, call 570/729-7053. The Butterfly Barn will also hold a special butterfly program for the public on Saturday, August 25 at 10:00 a.m.