Pam Martin, retired Kansas Department of Wildlife and Park educator, presented a fascinating program on Monarch butterflies and their migrations to eight members of the Great Bend Garden Club during their October meeting.

Along with a video presentation, she explained some of the mysteries of the Monarch’s yearly migration, which has been a passion of hers and which led to her own visit to the location in Mexico where the migration begins and ends. Every year, she and others in the Great Bend area tag many Monarchs before their migration south for the winter begins. This is a result of her connection to a zoology professor, Fred Urquhart and his wife who originated and refined the tagging process in an attempt to locate the southern origin of the migration.

Martin has received two commendation plaques as a result of finding butterflies in Mexico marked with tags that she applied. Martin used to present yearly programs on butterflies at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center. She continues to provide nature-related programs in her retirement.

The Monarchs’ winter location in Mexico was found by a Mexican entomologist, Ken Brugger, and his wife in 1974 after a two-year search. The location was in a mountainous forest about 100 miles northwest of Mexico City. A horse ride up into the mountains enabled Martin and her friends to reach the area just as the butterflies were beginning to awaken. Many mysteries of how the yearly migration of four generations of Monarchs from as far north as Canada to their winter grounds in Mexico happens have been solved, but some still remain and are still being researched. The solution of why they range from Mexico to the middle of Canada is because that is the climate required by their food source, the milkweed plant.

The next meeting of Great Bend Garden Club will be at 10 a.m. on Nov. 19 at the Great Bend Senior Center meeting room, 2005 Kansas Ave. Visitors are welcome.