These “clumps” on trees at Mexico’s El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary are not leaves, but monarch butterflies. Millions of the orange butterflies overwinter each year on the Oyamel firs in the protected area west of Mexico City.
However, to reach this winter quarters, the butterflies have to travel a long distance. It takes them around four to ten weeks from their starting point in North America, covering around 50 kilometers every day. When they arrive in El Rosario, the butterflies huddle together to keep each other warm, as they are very sensitive to cold and frost. Monarch butterflies can no longer fly at temperatures below ten degrees.
But it’s not just the temperature that can harm the delicate butterflies: “Intensive agriculture, combined with the use of herbicides, is destroying the milkweed and thus an important source of food for the caterpillars, illegal deforestation is destroying their resting places and the increasing winter storms as a result of climate change are leaving them “perish on their journey,” says Sabine Riewenherm, President of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.
The photo above, in which the sun’s rays carefully push through the trees and warm the butterflies, is now raising awareness of the highly endangered species. It was shot by Spanish National Geographic photographer Jaime Rojo. However, he had to be extremely patient for this: “On this one day there was this little window on the horizon where I knew that when the sun went down there, the light would be amazing. So I waited and waited. Suddenly everything turned golden and this wonderful light came in from the side of the forest,” Rojo explains. This patience has now earned him the title of “European Nature Photographer of the Year 2024” from the Society for Nature Photography, which has been awarding this award since 2001.