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	People and Monarchs October 22nd, Eagle Pass News Guide article by Carol Cullar

She'd lost her mother the day before. They buried her on the ninth of October and were returning home to an empty house on a gloomy day. As they drove into the drive, the trees sheltering the front of the house exploded into color and flight. Thousands of brilliant yellow and black butterflies flew upward and fluttered back onto the trees. Monarchs were everywhere! A reminder and a promise. For that mother she missed so desperately had grown up deep in Mexico and raised her children with the old legends: tales in which the coming of the monarchs each year represented the spirits of departed loved ones. She knew then that her mother would always be with her, and that she herself would come to accept that transformation. And so this year the monarchs' arrival has been bitter-sweet. A blessing and a benediction. This was just one of the many calls pouring into the Nature Center toward the end of last week. Last Thursday's News Guide put out a call for reports of large clusters of monarchs. Fortune would have it that the article arrived just as some 100,000 monarchs descended on Eagle Pass. A stream of callers began to add their tales to that of Lourdes Oviedo. In Eagle Pass, Sam and Rosa Lerma, Mary Rose Besa, Brian Harper, Norma Sepulveda, and Juanita Mallen called with large clusters in their trees. Rossana Moncada down Thompson Road, Salvador Gonzalez in Hopedale, Enrique Ibarra out at Foxx Trails, Maria Lafrenz' pecan orchard in Quemado added their reports of thousands of monarchs. Visiting monarch experts from Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Louisiana toured many of these sites later in the evening and photographed the phenomenon with Nature Center director, Carol Cullar. Monarch expert Carole Jordan was invited to give a monarch presentation at Benavides Elementary on Friday. Children were treated to caterpillars of all sizes and hatching monarchs, which they tagged and released. The anticipated movie crew from Germany arrived late on the evening of the 16th, missing the welcoming supper provided for them by the Chamber of Commerce. There were luggage delays in San Antonio, and they had difficulty renting a vehicle and getting here. Their director Angela Graas offered her apologies to the community for their delay. Filming began Tuesday morning with schedule adjustments required because of the several cold fronts that swept through Maverick County. The film is loosely patterned on Dr. Robert Michael Pyle's book Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage. The author accompanied the film crew. Dr. Pyle commented on the stark beauty of this part of the country and will be returning to Eagle Pass on the 26/27th before his departure from Texas.
		Dr. Elizabeth Howard, Director of Journey North, with husband Harry, visit briefly with Carol Cullar, director, and Randy Laurance, vice president of Rio Bravo Nature Center, before touring monarch sites in Maverick County. Journey North provides an online curriculum and support group for thousands of elementary teacher across the United States who are interested in regional migration studies.
Sunday morning, Dr. Elizabeth Howard, noted monarch educator and founder of the national learning program Journey North, called the Nature Center to say she had seen the reports of heavy migration coming out of Eagle Pass and hopped on a plane from Vermont. She and her husband were in Del Rio and wondered if the Center director could take them around and show them the sites. They were met at Mary's Café in Quemado and given the royal tour: pecan orchards in Quemado, Salvador Gonzalez's "cathedral" of old growth trees in Hopedale, the Weyrich Pecan Farm, to name a few. The story isn't complete if one tells only the scientific aspects of this amazing migration across the continent and spanning distances of thousands of miles. It is essential to also talk about the scientists studying the phenomenon, the teachers in elementary schools spreading the word to our future conservationists and imbuing our children with a respect and love for Nature. We must mention the enthusiasts who work to protect the monarch habitat and native milkweed food. We have to include the hundreds of gardeners across the country who are following University of Kansas' criteria to establish Monarch Waystations in the form of carefully tended butterfly gardens and the individuals on the front lines in the forests of Michoacan, Mexico, who are fighting to protect from illegal loggers the monarchs' roosting trees in the Reserva de la Monarca. Any story about Nature in this day and age is the story of people who cherish the Earth and are willing to protect her wild places. Let us hope that Maverick County continues to be such a place.