Wellington Park in West Newton was abuzz Saturday morning, as children, parents, and curious onlookers gathered for the Fifth Annual Newton Monarch Festival.
Though the monarch is one of the most recognizable species of butterfly, it is also highly endangered. Newton Conservators, a nonprofit, organized the festival to showcase the monarch’s beauty while also raising awareness about monarch conservation and protection efforts.
Ted Kuklinski, the president of Newton Conservators, oversaw the event, which drew several hundred people to the park over a three-hour period.
“This is our biggest monarch festival ever,” said Kuklinski.
Attendees were treated to a variety of butterfly-themed events, intended to appeal to all ages. Attendees could tour the pollinator garden, and children could also partake in various arts-and-crafts projects or have their faces painted as butterflies.
The festival’s main event came when Kuklinski assembled the crowd for the release of a monarch into nature. This year’s butterfly was raised by Newtonville resident Susan Denison, who found the egg in her garden.
“His name is Chrys, short for chrysalis,” said Denison. “We know it’s a guy because it has some black spots on the veins.”
After a few moments’ hesitation, Chrys fluttered out of the net and off into the sunlight, to the cheers and delight of the encircled crowd.
The release was a captivating moment in that it represented the completion of a multi-phase metamorphosis process.
“It takes a month from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly,” said Dennison.
The caterpillar-to-monarch process is also a very delicate one—very few eggs successfully complete the evolution.
“Monarchs may lay 300 to 400 eggs, but only a very small percentage survive from their many predators,” said Kuklinski.
The process is also threatened by environmental changes, which have made monarch butterfly reproduction more difficult.
“Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on milkweed, and the population is threatened by loss of milkweed habitat and use of pesticides,” said Kuklinski. “Over recent years, sightings of monarchs were fewer and fewer.”
Ann Dorfman oversees the pollinator garden at Wellington Park, where several species of milkweed are grown to encourage monarch survival. Festival attendees could take home milkweed plants and seeds to add to their own gardens, helping bolster the local monarch population.
“The key to their survival is a good supply of native milkweed,” said Dorfman.
Kuklinski explained that the festival was a particularly special event because it marked the end of the monarch season.
“During the rest of the season, the butterflies live only a few weeks, during which they will mate and more eggs will be produced,” Kuklinski said. “But the last brood of the season is preparing for its remarkable migratory journey down south. If they are fortunate, they go all the way to Mexico.”
In full-circle fashion, descendants of the migrating monarchs could wind up back in Newton and be featured at next year’s monarch festival.
“It will take several generations in a kind of relay race for their progeny to make it back up north,” said Kuklinski.
