Displaying items by tag: great smoky mountains institute at tremont
Mountain monarchs inspired Wanda DeWaard’s legacy of citizen science
Successful Smokies monarch tagging project is a product of the people
Every winter, way up in the oyumel firs in Mexico’s high elevation forests, millions of North American monarch butterflies that have traveled from as far north as Canada cluster in colonies to overwinter before flying north again to lay eggs in spring. Tens of thousands of monarchs might adorn a single tree like a papery gown, sometimes weighing it down enough to break off branches.
To get to the oyumel forests several miles above sea level, which provide a perfect microclimate for the weary travelers, they migrate south using different aerial paths, or flyways, that merge together over Central Texas. This migrating generation can live up to nine months and might travel anywhere from 1,000-3,000 miles to the forests they seek, yet have never been to. Mysteriously, they find their way and sometimes even make it to the exact tree where their ancestors four or five generations back once clustered.
Monarchs are the only butterfly that makes a long two-way migration. Despite much research on the species, science still hasn’t fully unraveled the secrets of their incredibly accurate homing system. This makes them one of the true marvels of the natural world.
- monarch butterflies
- smokies monarchs
- wanda dewaard
- monarch tagging program
- eastern north american monarch butterflies
- monarchs in mexico
- oyumel firs
- great smoky mountains institute at tremont
- tremont butterflies
- tremont tagging
- tremont butterfly tagging
- elan young journalist
- register for monarch tagging
- citizen science
- monarch watch
- milkweed
- milkweed toxic to birds
- monarch conservation
Come talk words with writers at Tremont conference in Smokies
TOWNSEND — Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont this fall will host the second annual Tremont Writers Conference, an intensive five-day retreat for writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry coordinated in partnership with Smokies Life, formerly Great Smoky Mountains Association.
Applications to participate in the event may be submitted online through April 30.
From Wednesday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 27, a small group of selected writers will join renowned authors and professional park educators on Tremont’s campus in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Participants will enjoy brainstorming and fine-tuning their work with award-winning author workshop leaders while also learning and writing throughout the day.
Monarch butterflies, an ephemeral but regular glimpse of beauty, are fluttering toward extinction
Dramatic monarch declines mean the bell tolls for we
KNOXVILLE — Monarch butterflies are ephemeral by nature. The orange and black dalliances that flitter through our lives, our yards, and our countryside like motes of dust are here one minute and gone the next. We pause for a few seconds to watch the “flutter-bys” and then move on.
For about all of the Lepidopteran family, where they come from, where they go, their raison d'être, we don’t ask. They are winged wisps that pass through our busy lives. But that is not true with this orange and black butterfly, named to honor King William III of England, the Prince of Orange. But two people did ask.
Norah and Fred Urquhart lived in Southern Canada and in the late 1930s they noticed that the monarch butterflies seemed to all be fluttering south this time of the year. Could they possibly be migrating and if so, where did they go? The notion that a butterfly might migrate south for the winter seemed hard to fathom. Yes, broad-winged hawks migrate. But a flimsy butterfly?
- monarch butterfly
- monarch
- are monarchs endangered?
- stephen lyn bales
- stephen bales
- ijams nature center
- lepidoptera
- catalina aguado
- norah and fred urquhart
- flight of the butterflies
- xerces society
- great smoky mountains institute at tremont
- danaus plexippus ssp plexippus
- endangered species
- international union for conservation of nature
- pesticide
- pollinator
- habitat loss
- climate change
- herbicide
- mexico