It was seeing how little of the Monarch's only food plant, milkweed, was left for them to feed on during their amazing, multigenerational, multinational migration. These butterflies occupy a sliver of habitat speckled with microhabitats, seemingly scripted for their survival. staying in someone else's home, and the hassle it is to find a shower when you're travelling by bike. Her almost incredible account captures the animal itself, the continent it crosses, and its plight with style and deep connection.

There were a few times when she was drawing parallels between her own experiences on the journey and social justice issues such as immigration and racism where I felt she could have expanded more rather than just throwing in a sentence or two - but I also appreciated the awareness of the challenges she didn't face because of citizenship and race.Her anecdotes about travelling as a single female on a bike and finding places to camp were interesting.

Although she kept a diary as her reference for the trip, it is obvious that she bases her writing on an extensive background as a naturalist, and biologist. As I walked with Brianda, in the company of towering oyamel firs ( Abies religiosa) and leggy, smooth-barked Mexican pines, she patiently led me down a dusty trail, forgave me for my crummy Spanish, and courteously laughed at my attempted jokes. The presence of milkweed in agricultural fields (between crops and on field edges) declined 97 percent from 1999 to 2009 in Iowa, and 94 percent in Illinois.

With action comes connections – connections to a team that is growing bigger every year, and to a migration that is growing smaller but that we will not give up on… You can’t protect just one aspect of a traveler’s journey; to protect the traveler, you must protect their every step, every wing beat. To raise awareness about the decline of monarch buttefly population, Dykman embarked on a solo bike trip more than 10,000 miles long. In addition, it takes several generations of monarch to fly north from Mexico to Canada, but the butterflies who take off from Canada travel all the way to Mexico. but, my memory is she went to one of those recycle cycle places and built herself a bike from recycled parts. However, Sara found solace in the many conservationists and backyard butterfly gardeners she met along the way, and in the 9000 schoolchildren she gave talks to en route.