A Monarch’s Journey: From Mexico to NC and Back
Thursday, September 22, 2:00 – 3:30 PM
$20 Registration Fee.
Estela Romero, monarch educator and journalist who works in the overwintering sanctuaries near her home in Angangueo, Michoacán and Kim Bailey, local educator and farmer/owner of Milkweed Meadows Farm in Fruitland, NC will present up-close and personal views of the monarch’s remarkable life cycle and epic migration. Estela and Kim will share their in-depth knowledge of these winged wonders on the journey from Mexico to NC and back again. Also learn how to invite monarchs into your own garden by growing milkweed and planting a succession of nectar-producing native flowers throughout spring, summer, and fall.
About Estela Romero:
Based in Angangueo, Mexico, Estela Romero serves as a local reporter for the Journey North citizen science and education program. In this role, she involves children from her local community in reporting the monarchs’ fall arrival, sending news about the monarchs’ overwintering season and announcing the butterflies’ departure for spring migration in March. During the winter, Estela also coordinates the Mexican side of the Symbolic Monarch Migration, a program uniting children across North America through the migration of paper ambassador butterflies. Each fall, over 25,000 students in Canada and the USA create symbolic monarch butterflies and send them to children to Mexico. Estela delivers these butterflies while presenting environmental education programs in the schools surrounding the monarch overwintering sanctuaries. In the early 1970s, Estela was a child living in Angangueo when the monarch overwintering sites were first “discovered” by the rest of the world. Her family knew about the monarchs for many generations prior to this and also has a long history of working with the first American scientists who came to Mexico to study the monarchs.
About Kim Bailey:
An avid wildlife habitat gardener and environmental educator for over 25 years, farmer Kim Bailey has a true passion for pollinators. Kim first visited the monarch butterfly overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico in 2002 and has co-led several trips to the area since then. She now enjoys growing wildflowers, fruits, and vegetables while learning more about the pollinators that also make their home at her farm, Milkweed Meadows, in Fruitland, NC. Milkweed Meadows is a 5th generation family farm located on 100 acres surrounding the confluence of Clear Creek, Kyles Creek, and Henderson Creek. Its grassy “bottoms” once nourished cows that produced milk sold to Biltmore Dairy Farms in Asheville. Today, the meadows are yielding milk of a different kind — milkweed plants to help sustain monarch butterflies.