The unveiling of new international monarch butterfly protection project will higlight the Canadian Museum of Nature's annual public meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 24.
Ottawa residents who attend will hear about the North American Monarch Conservation Plan from Jean Lauriault, an environmental specialist with the Canadian Centre for Biodiversity Research Services.
Lauriault will speak at the conclusion of the annual meeting, which is held to inform citizens about the national museum's internal operations and its activities locally, nationally and internationally.
“I think it’s important to broaden people’s perspectives above and beyond exhibits,” said Dan Smythe, chief spokesman for the Centretown-based museum.
“To so many people [the museum] is just the big building downtown, but it’s so much more than that. We’re a national
institution, we have scientists doing international research, and I hope Jean’s presentation will help show that.”
The conservation project, which was established in June, is tri-national, with researchers participating from Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
The monarch, one of the best known of all butterflies, has special protection under both Canada's and Mexico’s Species at Risk acts, but does not have special legal status in the United States.
Each country in North America has areas where monarchs breed, migrate, and overwinter, and each of these life stages requires different resources.
A weak link in any part of the chain can throw off the entire migratory process, experts say.
Unfortunately, monarchs are losing habitat during each of these three life stages. Illegal deforestation of the monarch’s overwintering grounds in Mexico — where the butterfly congregates in dense concentrations — has led to an extreme reduction in its population.
As a result, much of Lauriault’s presentation will focus on Mexico.
The project has been designed to include three phases, and work has already started on the first, which involves “training the trainers,” according the Lauriault. Scientists and handlers in Mexico will be taught the latest conservation techniques.
The presentation will be interactive and include monarch specimens.
The meeting’s agenda includes a detailed update on the on-going renewal of the museum site, which began in 2004 and is expected to finish in 2010.
There will also be an overview of the museum's operations based on the 2007-08 annual report, followed by financial statements and a question-and-answer session. The meeting will be held on the third floor of the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, at Metcalfe and McLeod streets, beginning at 6:30 p.m.