For years, David James, who studies insects at Washington State University, had wanted to examine the migration (迁徙)patterns of West Coast monarch butterflies (黑脉金斑蝶). The route the butterflies travel has been hardly known because the populations are too small to follow. For every 200 monarchs tagged (打标签)by a researcher, only one is usually recovered at the end of its trip, James says, and finding even 200 in the wild to tag is unlikely. Knowing the route is vital to conservation efforts, but James had no way to figure it out- until he got a phone call from Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
The prison was looking for new activities to improve the mental health of those serving long-term sentences. So James began working with prisoners to raise monarchs through the whole process of their transformation. The adult insects were then tagged and released from the prison. Over five years, nearly 10, 000 monarchs flew from the facility. Elsewhere in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, researchers released another few thousand.
The tags included email addresses, and soon after the first butterflies took off, James started receiving messages from people who had spotted them. The butterflies, the reports confirmed, wintered in coastal California. Twelve of them landed at Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Several more headed to Bolinas and Morro Bay.
The work helps researchers identify ideal places to plant milkweed and other vegetation that are important to the life cycle of West Coast monarch butterflies. It also brought out the gentler side of some of the prisoners. "They were very worried that they were going to harm the butterflies, "James says. Watching the monarch change their form also touched the men. "This butterfly changed, " James recalls prisoners telling him, "and maybe we can too. "
