Trying to Be a Better Citizen Scientist
I have been raising Monarch butterflies as an adult for six years now. In these six years, I’ve always shared my efforts on social media, the last two focusing on TikTok.
I don’t want to just share the butterflies. I want to focus on two things when it comes to the content I create:
I want to promote ethical an responsible rearing close to nature that follows the science.
I want to encourage people to connect with nature better and want to help our environment, particularly by helping our pollinators by protecting and creating habitat.
I’ve learned a lot in these six years. I wrote an entry about how I got back into Monarch rearing back in April, and in that I mention how I got back into the hobby by chance. That first summer getting back into the hobby, I was mass-rearing these caterpillars in my tiny kitchen without much of the knowledge I know now. I look back and cringe. The following year, I knew I wanted to do it again, but I knew I needed to do better. We were still renting at this time, and we had a poor excuse of a backyard (though, lucky to have one considering most apartments don’t have this). Through mesh pop-up enclosures and a greenhouse shelf, I began rearing outdoors and being more conscious of the number I was bringing in. I began focusing on educating myself and others, and adopted practices into my setup and routine such as bleaching milkweed in order to prevent disease.
Even now, I am constantly trying to be better. I’m not a professional entomologist, nor do I claim to be. I’m just a thirty-something woman with a yard and a love for nature that wants to help the Monarchs, other pollinators, and our planet. As I write this, I have 50-ish lives in my care. I’ve taken care of that many before, but as I am in a habit of reading science blogs and studies on the Monarch, I often question if what I am doing is right.
Should I be raising Monarch Butterflies? Are people like me doing more harm than good?
As of right now, my position is that we should continue rearing monarchs for educational awareness just so as long we are doing the following:
All lives we take in our care were collected locally, from the wild. We should NEVER be purchasing captive-bred Monarchs.
We should not be captive-breeding (hand-pairing) Monarchs. Regular people do not know enough about their genetics, and we should leave this up to professional scientists.
We should be rearing them outdoors as much as possible. There are studies that support this practice, and it’s just common sense. We should be keeping them as close to nature as possible while they’re in our care. This is why I try to think of rearing more as sheltering. I try to stay as hands-off as possible. They are not pets.
We should be bringing in methods of proper sanitation and disease prevention. That means using proper enclosures for each life stage with adequate airflow, routine cleaning, perhaps bleaching eggs and food to help prevent the spread of OE and other diseases, and even testing our adult butterflies for OE.
Over the years in sharing my efforts, my audience has been a mix of interested observers, fellow citizen scientists, people who are interested in helping but don’t want to rear, those who want to get into the hobby of raising butterflies, and those who staunchly believe we should not be interfering with nature at all. Ever. Period. I’ve gotten some pushback for what I’m doing with the latter group. Most are nice about it and we have a good conversation.
When someone approaches me about getting involved with the hobby, I am excited. Scientists are aware of how the awareness of this gateway insect can spread by wildfire when they are reared by people who are enthusiastic about nature. I want to encourage them. But, I do typically ask these questions when they come to me asking how to get started:
Did you know that the best way to help Monarchs is planting milkweed and creating and protecting native habitat and not rearing?
Have you looked into how to do this?
What enclosures will you use?
Where will you get your milkweed from?
How many eggs and caterpillars do you plan on bringing in?
Why do you want to do this?
Innocently, lots of people see others raising Monarchs and decide they’re going to do it. So they will usually do some light searching on Google for the basics, and may eventually wind up in a Facebook group with other butterfly enthusiasts. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’ve been in these groups myself and overall everyone is incredibly well-meaning and has the same goal: to help the Monarchs.
And this goal is something that pro wild captive-rearing people and those who believe we should look but not touch still have in common. I’m somewhere in the middle, and this may come to a surprise—I do not think that most people should be raising Monarchs.
Bear with me, people usually are taken aback when I say that.
Rearing butterflies fundamentally is very simple, it isn’t rocket science. But at the same time, it takes more homework and effort than the average person realizes and is willing to put in. It is a positive thing when someone shows interest in raising, because it does show a desire to help Monarchs and other pollinators and be closer to nature—something that needs to happen more overall with society today, in my opinion.
So, I will always make myself available to help any curious soul who wants to become closer to Monarchs. I know the path will lead them to the bigger picture, and I am certain that every individual that becomes interested is a major gain in terms of the cause at hand.
In a world off paywalls to journalism and social media algorithms blocking important information, I’m working to make everything I just touched on in this blog post more accessible. To start, I’ve put together the following:
Resources for Citizen Scientists: A list of my favorite resources regarding pollinators and native plants.
The Butterfly Help Desk: An online community on Discord where anyone from curious everyday citizens to gardeners of any level, to citizen scientists, to professionals in environmentalism can come together to discuss relevant topics and educate each other.
If you are reading this, I do hope you will check out the above links. I am not looking to stop here, either. My work has truly only begun. Our work has truly only begun.
You know, it’s interesting how TikTok has become my main educational tool. I have no desire to be an influencer, I’m not posting thirst traps, and I’m an extremely awkward nerd that needed to practice many years to be able to get in front of the camera and speak how I do now. I saw something in the platform that scared me, but had a lot of potential.
TikTok rewards mindless scrolling and escapism from reality. Everything that I hate about social media. I thought to myself, can I use this tool that further takes people away from the natural world to help bring them back in? I’m still answering that question, but at the end of the day if I have managed to inspire one person to open their mind and begin searching for milkweed and wildflowers native to their area, I consider that a success.
To whatever comes next,
~Emily