As the watery light filtered down through treetops, I closed my eyes and listened. What sounded like leaves rustling in the wind was the flickering wings of thousands of monarch butterflies as they flitted through the oyamel fir forest. I opened my eyes and sat on the forest floor, watching as thousands of monarchs rose into the blue sky in clouds of orange smoke.
I’d traveled to the Trans-Mexican volcanic mountains of Michoacán, a three-hour drive from Mexico City, to see the monarchs at their overwintering sites. The high-altitude forest here is the perfect microclimate for the species, and it’s one of the few places in the world where you can hear butterflies flying because of their great numbers. The monarchs’ annual multigenerational, 2,500-mile journey from Canada to Mexico may date back as far as 10,000 years ago, when glaciers last retreated from North America, leaving behind isolated islands of forest in Michoacán.
The butterflies’ arduous pilgrimage is one of the planet’s great animal migrations. But in 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the species as endangered because of a plummeting population driven by habitat loss, agricultural insecticides, and climate change. The population that overwinters in Mexico declined by almost 60 percent in 2024, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s annual count—a near-historic low—and in December 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Endangered Species Act protection for the monarchs. So it was heartening to see them in such large numbers, and this March the World Wildlife Fund reported a significant rebound, still well below the long-term average, however.
As a keystone pollinator species and food source for birds and wasps, monarchs and the risks they face have far-reaching implications for the entire ecosystem, including us. The butterflies help pollinate the plants we rely on for healthy, biodiverse ecosystems and agriculture, and pollinators as a whole are responsible for as many as one in three bites of food that we eat.
I was here in late winter with Natural Habitat Adventures, which has been running its Kingdom of the Monarchs trip since 1998 but has seen a spike in interest in recent years as the species faces increasing threats. The ecotourism company also launched women-only departures in 2023 as part of its Women’s Journeys collection, one of which I joined. Natural Habitat Adventures (Nat Hab) partners with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to bring travelers to this less-visited part of Mexico to support monarch conservation efforts and raise awareness of their plight. “Our super-power is really to add value to the monarchs,” said Court Whelan, an entomologist and chief sustainability officer at Natural Habitat Adventures. “We made the monarchs worth much more alive than dead, helping locals be less dependent on subsistence agriculture and deleterious things that might happen in the region such as mining,” Whelan said.
To reach the high forest, Natural Habitat tours travel by horseback.
Courtesy of Natural Habitat
On a sunny, cool afternoon, our group of 16 sat down for lunch in Mineral de Angangueo, the closest town to the UNESCO-designated Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, where the sanctuaries are located. Angangueo was able to transition away from mining to ecotourism in the 1990s; the small former silver mining town sits at 8,500 feet with the sanctuaries located thousands of feet higher. Our expedition was led by biologists Melissa Silva and Daniela Nieto; after lunch we all clamored into two open-back trucks to rumble up the mountainside toward the sanctuaries.
As we neared the El Rosario sanctuary, which often sees the highest butterfly numbers of any colony in the world, we spotted our first few monarchs weaving across the road, cast against a yawning mountain vista. “In these little towns the only way to save the butterflies is tourism,” said Nieto. “And ecotourism isn’t just saving the monarchs, it’s saving the forest, other animals, and the community.” Because the sanctuaries reside on land managed by the community, or ejido, they’re operated entirely by local people, the ejidatarios, and whether travelers visit on their own or with a tour operator, it’s mandatory to have an ejido guide in the sanctuaries. At the trailhead, the ejidatarios wrangled their horses, who kicked up dust in the honeyed afternoon light, as we each saddled up and started the climb into the high reaches of the forest.
In addition to donating 1 percent of annual revenue to WWF, Nat Hab works with the nonprofit to support and facilitate ejidatario-led conservation efforts. These initiatives include the annual monarch census, helping establish a mushroom farming industry—which acts as a revenue source during the off-season—and reforestation. (Bark beetle infestations and a warming climate threaten the integrity of the fir forest, and some researchers are even experimenting with moving the forest to higher elevations elsewhere.) Nat Hab also bolsters the local economy through tourism so people can continue these projects year-round instead of leaving to secure work elsewhere during the spring and summer when the monarchs head back north.
Our horses clip-clopped uphill over stone and root as pearly violet-eared hummingbirds darted across the dirt path and red warblers whistled in the trees. We continued by foot for the last 30 minutes, the altitude pressing on our lungs as we neared 10,000 feet. Visitors can’t enter the inner core of the colony because our breath can affect the population by increasing humidity and carbon dioxide, but there’s no need. As we reached the end of the woodland trail, I watched, mesmerized, as thousands of monarchs drifted from the trees like autumn leaves.
Witnessing their elegant, synchronized movement here at the end of their perilous journey felt miraculous, and in many ways, the migration is. The entire cycle from Mexico up to Canada involves four generations of butterflies, each of which only lives several weeks. Then, a fifth super-generation makes the Herculean return trip from Canada to Mexico alone in search of a warmer climate over the winter. The insects employ a navigation system that includes solar orientation using an internal magnetic compass.
But exactly how they find the same few mountains in Mexico each year remains a mystery, which makes it all the more beautiful (the leading theory is an ancestral chemical imprint left in the forest). For Laine Johnson Crump, seeing the monarchs had been a lifelong dream after raising the butterflies and teaching her preschool classes in Minnesota about them for years. “I loved that it was something tangible I could do in my own backyard to save a species in my own backyard,” she shared with me as we hiked back down.
Over dinner that night at Hotel La Margarita, I learned that most of the women on my trip had a longstanding connection to monarchs. From their homes across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, many of my travel companions had been part of the collective, international effort to support the butterflies along their journey. Some had spent decades raising and tagging the butterflies and planting pollinator gardens, especially milkweed, a larvae food source that’s disappearing due to pesticides and agriculture. Others remembered flipping through the pages of a 1976 issue of National Geographic as children, awestruck by its iconic cover shot of Mexican naturalist Catalina Trail (née Aguado) cloaked in the butterflies. (Catalina and her then-husband, Kenneth Brugger, discovered the first colony 50 years ago, in the area now designated as the Chincua sanctuary.)
“This is the one trip where we routinely get several people with a long history of monarch butterfly affiliation,” Whelan said. “After the trip, they’re ready to do something greater, and that enthusiasm and dedication permeates the rest of our travelers; it’s one of the better trips for creating ambassadors.”
Monarch butterflies have significance in Mexican culture.
Courtesy of Natural Habitat
Days later, we ended our time with the butterflies at Chincua, the same sanctuary where the Bruggers discovered the first colony. The steep trail to reach the colony ran out at a green, sun-baked glade sheltered by fir trees. The monarchs weighed down the trees’ boughs in enormous, swollen clusters and danced around white blossoms that laced the ground cover. “The spirit of the forest feels older here,” Nieto said. I learned that in Aztec times, the butterflies were thought to be reincarnations of fallen soldiers, and many Mexicans still ascribe them deep spiritual significance, as they’re believed to embody the souls of their ancestors.
As we prepared to leave the sanctuary, I stood beneath the Canadian, American, and Mexican flags that snapped in the wind high above me at the entrance. I contemplated the monarchs’ journey through these three countries and the lessons about borders and belonging that this tiny, delicate species can teach us. Their survival has implications for the environment, but the migration is a moving spectacle that is worth protecting in its own right. “They should probably be saved just because we really love them,” said Whelan.
