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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:08:05
Sara Dykman
Yeah. This is the very beginning. You can visit all monarchs that are flying with me. So we were like a river of monarchs or like. Oh, yeah, like mile.
00:00:08:07 - 00:00:31:09
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman, and that is Sara Dykman, author of the book bicycling with butterflies. And we are going to be talking about her 10,000 mile journey, to follow the migration patterns of the monarch butterfly. Let's get right to it with Sara.
00:00:31:11 - 00:00:35:20
John Simmerman
Sara Dykman, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:00:35:22 - 00:00:37:24
Sara Dykman
Thanks for the invite.
00:00:37:26 - 00:00:47:15
John Simmerman
Sara. What I love to do is give my guests an opportunity just to give a really quick 32nd to introduction. So who is Sarah?
00:00:47:18 - 00:01:00:29
Sara Dykman
I love frogs and I love monarchs, and I love adventure. And so I just try and find ways to combined getting out into the world and being a voice for these animals that I love.
00:01:01:01 - 00:01:10:07
John Simmerman
I love that, I love that. Now, you said you love them. Is that your professional occupation? Are you actively, working in that field?
00:01:10:09 - 00:01:22:03
Sara Dykman
Yes. Currently I study frogs for the Forest Service out in California. But monarchs are part of my life. They'll always be part of my life. And so I'm always rooting for them as well.
00:01:22:06 - 00:01:40:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, here you are with your frogs. So I grew up in Northern California. We mentioned this, just before I, hit the record button. So I grew up on a ranch, in Northern California, in a little town called Lincoln. And we had our own pond, and we had our own little stream running through it.
00:01:40:19 - 00:02:01:27
John Simmerman
So I as a kid, I can remember, like, being fascinated with frogs and, you know, the snakes and amphibians and reptiles were were a big part of my growing up as a young child. And playing with that. I suspect you're you're probably going about things a little bit more scientifically. What specifically are you studying with amphibians?
00:02:01:29 - 00:02:23:12
Sara Dykman
So my project is a monitoring project onto endangered species, which happened to be the frog in the top right there. The banjo like a frog. And then the middle frog. There's called the A70 toad. The bottom one is the Pacific tree frog. And they're also amazing. They're probably the ones you saw in your pond. Okay. But the two on the top are federally listed.
00:02:23:18 - 00:02:38:11
Sara Dykman
And so my crew and I, we go out and we count every tadpole we can find in this very systematic way. And hopefully we can see trends, either positive or negative, that can hopefully go towards management decisions.
00:02:38:13 - 00:03:02:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah that's great. And and you are swatting at a fly because you have a fly. That's great. So where's your frog when you need him. You need somebody like Sparrow. Oh that's great. But really as much fun as it is to talk about frogs and, and, and little, little creatures and. Oh, by the way, I am in Austin, Texas.
00:03:02:16 - 00:03:28:04
John Simmerman
And so we have, the blind salamander, which is, a little endangered, little dude. And, they hang out at the Barton Springs area, so very much a part of, of our, you know, world. And we we have a lot of initiatives to try to, protect the habitat, you know, of these little beloved endangered species that are out there.
00:03:28:06 - 00:03:50:25
Sara Dykman
Yeah. In Texas. I'm so sorry about this. But Texas also has the barking frogs, and they're super cool because they don't have a tadpole stage. Everyone thinks all frogs are eggs. Tadpoles, adults. But that's not the case. There's, there's, like, 8000 species of frogs, and thousands of them don't have any tadpole stage at all. They go from eggs that hatch out as little adults.
00:03:50:28 - 00:04:14:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. So as you mentioned earlier, that you also love the monarchs. And in fact, the connection to active towns is the bikes and the bicycling with butterflies. This was an absolutely delightful book. I listen to it on audible as I was walking around my neighborhood here in Austin, and, I just had to reach out to you and see if I could get you on the podcast.
00:04:14:29 - 00:04:31:03
John Simmerman
It took us several months to make this happen. And so I'm super excited to talk with you about that. That combination of bicycling and butterflies. Why don't you set the scene up? And in terms of this, this book and how this all came about.
00:04:31:06 - 00:04:55:18
Sara Dykman
So I've always loved bicycling, and I was actually on a bike tour from Bolivia to Texas, and I was with a friend and we were about 11.5 months into our trip, and I, we were pretty done with biking at that point. So we were in Mexico and I remember thinking, oh, the the monarchs there, you know, they come to Mexico in the winter, and that's about all I knew about them.
00:04:55:18 - 00:05:21:19
Sara Dykman
And I was like, it'd be fun to see them. And it was April. And the monarchs are usually in Mexico from the beginning of November to that, like middle of March. And so and then I looked at the, at the map, at the row, and it was like the monarchs are overwinter at about 10,000ft above sea level. And so the combination of like probably being late and biking up a 10,000ft hill was more than I wanted to do.
00:05:21:21 - 00:05:42:21
Sara Dykman
And so I, I said, let's I'll do it later. And what it takes is like just a little seed of a plan. And yeah, the seed became, became an idea. And then I just picked a time. I think that's the hardest part on a trip is just saying, I'm going to do this, and you pick a time on the calendar, and then you make it happen.
00:05:42:24 - 00:05:49:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I pulled up a spoon in the road. So this is that trip. This is the one from Bolivia to Texas, right?
00:05:49:19 - 00:06:12:18
Sara Dykman
Yep. Yeah, definitely hardest thing I've ever done. A very hard trip. It's that's a lot there. Yeah. The you know, people always would ask me when I'm on my other trips, like, are you going to write a book? And I, I never really thought that that was something I wanted to do. And I didn't have a lot to say.
00:06:12:18 - 00:06:29:29
Sara Dykman
Like, the point for me was to go and see the world and have adventures and meet people and push my body and. But then on my butterfly trip, I realized, like I did have something to say, which was about like supporting, supporting butterflies and seeing the world through the lens of these animals that we love.
00:06:30:01 - 00:07:08:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And and specifically to I mean, one of the things that I love about this is, is that connection of bike riding, seeing things. I frequently talk about on the Active towns, channel about when you are walking and biking in your community, you, you see it at a much different level. And that theme kept coming up over and over and over again in your book of because you're traveling closer to human speed, you're able to like, really heal your environment and you're able to notice things and you frequently will, like stop and go in and say, oh, Caterpillar's over here.
00:07:08:03 - 00:07:14:09
John Simmerman
You know, and be able to go or rescue a snake or a frog in the, in the street. So it's fantastic.
00:07:14:12 - 00:07:33:12
Sara Dykman
Yeah, that's that's the beauty of bike touring. And I was going like about 50 to 60 miles a day mostly, and going slow ten miles an hour pace. Like you're going to cover that in six hours. So you have a lot of time to go do other things and, see, see what you see.
00:07:33:14 - 00:07:36:21
John Simmerman
And notice things like this.
00:07:36:23 - 00:08:00:13
Sara Dykman
Yeah. And like so many times, you know, we think, oh, we have to go to a national park or we have to go to another country to see these, like, wild creatures doing really incredible things. And then you just stop on the side of the road and you see a beautiful monarch nectarine on a beautiful milkweed. And there's this, really amazing relationship between these two animals.
00:08:00:13 - 00:08:25:13
Sara Dykman
So the, the, this is a male monarch and he is nectarine on a milkweed, but the female monarchs will find these milkweeds to, to lay their eggs. And the only food source of monarch caterpillars are these milkweeds. And there's lots of different species of them. But they're toxic to most herbivores. But the monarchs can eat the milkweed, hold the milkweed toxins in their own body, and then they become poisonous.
00:08:25:13 - 00:08:43:29
Sara Dykman
And so the bright orange is warning predators. Hey. What? I was a caterpillar. I eat toxic milkweed. I'm toxic. Don't mess with me. And so there's this. This really amazing, like ecological, like phenomenon happening in our own backyards, on our own side of the road. And all we have to do is step outside and notice. Yeah.
00:08:44:02 - 00:09:07:03
John Simmerman
And the and the premise of the book and really what you're doing is you are following the butterfly. So talk about that and talk about that origin of that idea of, oh, I know what I'll do since I didn't get enough of bike riding going from Bolivia to Texas, I'm going to be like, I'm going to follow the migration of of these little doodads.
00:09:07:06 - 00:09:09:21
John Simmerman
Talk about that.
00:09:09:23 - 00:09:33:18
Sara Dykman
Yeah. So the monarch migration is really incredible. They all the monarchs born pretty much from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic seaboard. They go to the small little forest in Mexico where they hang from the trees. And that's that blue dot there in Mexico. And then in the spring, they're migrate north where the milkweed is reemerged after a winter of dormancy, and they lay their eggs and then they die.
00:09:33:20 - 00:09:55:10
Sara Dykman
So I followed about between 3 and 5 generations of monarchs on their route. And each part of their migration, the monarchs had different needs and kind of had actually different like like the monarchs that are born in the fall, they are non reproductive. They're going to fly all the way back to Mexico. They're going to go to that forest having never been there before.
00:09:55:13 - 00:10:19:03
Sara Dykman
And so me biking with them, I could look at an egg on the side of the road and be like I maybe I saw your great, great grandma. Or I could say, oh my gosh, I could potentially fly to Mexico. And you've never been there before. And so I kind of added that, like the human scale to things, because it's easy to look at a map and be like, cool butterfly flies from Michoacan to Texas.
00:10:19:08 - 00:10:30:23
Sara Dykman
But then when you're actually when you see a cyclist that's just biked from metro kind of Texas, you're like, and so I think it kind of helps. It helps bring the distance in a scale into the picture.
00:10:30:26 - 00:10:37:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And so, so it was about, what, 10,000 miles around trip, right?
00:10:37:26 - 00:10:39:00
Sara Dykman
Yeah.
00:10:39:02 - 00:10:41:14
John Simmerman
Wow, wow.
00:10:41:16 - 00:10:42:10
Sara Dykman
I think.
00:10:42:12 - 00:10:50:08
John Simmerman
Yeah. Eight and a half months. So you make your way all the way up, all the way up to Canada, right?
00:10:50:11 - 00:11:12:15
Sara Dykman
Yeah, yeah. The I tried to, I tried to kind of get every corner of the of at least that eastern monarch, migration. So you can see that the whole North America or us in this picture is, has a yellow for the set where they overwinter in the summer or spend the summer. But the Rocky Mountains kind of divides them into 2 to 2 groups.
00:11:12:15 - 00:11:13:21
Sara Dykman
So I was following the Eastern.
00:11:13:21 - 00:11:38:20
John Simmerman
Monarchs, and you were following the Eastern monarchs, heading that way. And here's you. Here's you on on your rig. And this is, this is kind of a little bit of your journey. You it didn't sound like you had a whole lot of single track and and major off road. It seemed like in listening to the book that a good the majority of it was probably on some form of paved roads and maybe some gravel roads.
00:11:38:22 - 00:11:41:08
John Simmerman
But this is a really cool shot.
00:11:41:11 - 00:11:49:10
Sara Dykman
Yeah, this is a very beginning. You can those are all monarchs that are flying with me. So we were like a river of monarchs for like like a smile.
00:11:49:13 - 00:11:55:29
John Simmerman
There they are. That is so cool. Yeah. You are really biking with the butterflies.
00:11:56:02 - 00:12:19:23
Sara Dykman
Yeah. And then they kind of ditch me. And I didn't actually see all the monarchs on my trip. But like the point, like. Well, I guess when I made my trip, I used, like, crowdsourced monarch tracking data, and so I could kind of see. But what I saw when I was looking at all the different monarch tracking, maps was that some years.
00:12:19:23 - 00:12:34:24
Sara Dykman
There they go more east, some years they go more west, some years they fly north quickly. Some years they stay south longer. And so it was just a wild guess. My route, that's my route there. But but I always would tell people the point was it actually to see the monarchs? It was to see the people that could help the monarch.
00:12:34:24 - 00:12:41:26
Sara Dykman
And so literally every single person that I saw every single day for eight and a half months could help. Yeah. And that was the point.
00:12:41:29 - 00:13:09:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, that that definitely was the point. It had a profound impact on me, too, because, we do a good job in our front yard here, which gets a good deal of sun and we have it planted in a whole mixture of different flowering plants, a bunch of different stages, and that have some flowers on them. And then, quite a few other, bushes out there that just bring in the pollinators.
00:13:09:09 - 00:13:32:08
John Simmerman
It's just so really absolutely cool to see all the bees, different, different species of bees and different species of of butterflies coming in. And, I did buy a couple of packets of, of milkweed. And so I want to try to get those growing. I don't even know if they'll grow here in Austin. I don't even know if I got the right species of milkweed.
00:13:32:08 - 00:13:49:17
John Simmerman
You know, I know there's tons of them, but I tried to, like, zeroing in on what I thought would work. So I've got those seeds. I think I have them in the frigerator, kind of resting in at this point in the kind of in, in, in that mode. When should I plant those?
00:13:49:19 - 00:14:13:08
Sara Dykman
So you want to think about planting, you want to look out at what nature's doing. So right now the milkweeds are going to seed and then those seeds are going to rest on the ground all winter. So that's kind of where the refrigerator comes in. Yeah it's called cold stratification. So the seeds have to know like you don't want them to sprout now because the frost would come and kill them.
00:14:13:10 - 00:14:35:28
Sara Dykman
So they're waiting for winter. And so some people will just put seeds on the ground in the fall, and they'll let the seeds do their thing. And in the spring, hopefully they'll come on. That's a little bit more challenging, because when every plant comes up in the spring, it's hard to tell one from the other. And native plants, there's like, a mantra with native planting that's they sleep creep leap.
00:14:36:05 - 00:14:53:25
Sara Dykman
So it's a very slow process in the beginning, much of the the growth is actually below ground. So there's no grades or putting down long taproot so they can survive the summer. So you'll look at them and you'll be getting impatient. But one of my strategies is to put them in the fridge, like you're doing.
00:14:53:25 - 00:15:13:29
Sara Dykman
And then in the spring, take them out and plant them. I like to plant them actually, in little pots so that I can see them come up. And I know, okay, the only plant in this pot will be a milkweed. And then I put them around some milkweeds, especially in Texas, like, I know, from talking to lots of gardeners in Texas, that the soil is hard to dig.
00:15:14:02 - 00:15:36:22
Sara Dykman
And so sometimes it's best just to put that seed directly in your shovel can't penetrate down and get, deep enough for the, for water. But, a root can. And so, you know, like, antelope and milkweed and green milkweed often is putting those in the ground, letting them do the hard work of the digging is the best case.
00:15:36:25 - 00:15:43:15
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And the area that I'm thinking about putting it because I'm assuming it needs pretty good sunlight, is that typically the case?
00:15:43:19 - 00:15:44:15
Sara Dykman
Most of them.
00:15:44:18 - 00:16:03:23
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Because in the backyard we've got it's mostly shade because of the pecan trees. And so I'm like, well yeah, probably out front will be better. And it, it is going to be a little bit of a battle because there's lots of Texas wildflowers that are already popping up every spring there. So you never you never know where this conversation is going to go.
00:16:03:23 - 00:16:26:00
John Simmerman
So we went from riding bikes on this amazing journey to, okay, when do I plant my milkweed? Here's here's you on your rig once again. And I want to zoom in again on this because, I love the fact that your, your makeshift little panniers say one less car. Yay!
00:16:26:03 - 00:16:26:24
Sara Dykman
Yeah.
00:16:26:27 - 00:16:47:00
John Simmerman
That's that's another part of what really attracted me to your story is the fact that you know, a big part of what, I'm trying to do in advocating for globally is, you know, what we can all do to try to make our environment more conducive for active mobility and getting more people out of their cars on bikes.
00:16:47:03 - 00:16:55:00
John Simmerman
It's good for us. It's good for the planet. It's good for apparently, it's good for the butterflies. Tell us more.
00:16:55:03 - 00:17:18:01
Sara Dykman
Yeah, I love I love biking in towns. And there's a big difference between biking in a town that is trying to support active transportation and towns that aren't. And I've lived in all, all of them. But there's just nothing better than using your own body to get somewhere and like, you know, jumpstarting your heart and being waking up and being ready for the day.
00:17:18:01 - 00:17:40:14
Sara Dykman
And that's that was of my life for a long time. I was that was really important to me. And I would when I went to school in Northern California at Humboldt State University and my entire crew, we were bicyclists that we you know, we went to the city council meetings and demanded, bike packs and we tried to make commuting by bike and bus fun and know.
00:17:40:16 - 00:17:44:12
Sara Dykman
And it is, yeah, I love it. Yeah.
00:17:44:12 - 00:17:59:19
John Simmerman
Because you could have you could have just as easily followed that migration in a car. You didn't have to do it this way. But, knowing you and the fact that this was just the next adventure that you did, of course you did it by bike.
00:17:59:21 - 00:18:19:03
Sara Dykman
Yeah. The motor migration, progressive is not not an individual butterfly, but like, the front of monarchs is about 60 miles a day in the spring. And that's just the perfect distance for a cyclist, in my opinion. Bike touring and yeah, a car. You're not going to see the milkweed. You're not going to see the butterflies. You're probably going to hit a few.
00:18:19:03 - 00:18:25:19
Sara Dykman
I think there's a study that came out. It's like I forget what it was. 1% of monarch population is killed by cars that year.
00:18:25:22 - 00:18:46:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. One of the other wonderful things about the book, too, is and you sort of alluded to it earlier, is that a big part of the journey? And a big part of the book was about the people along the way that you would meet. Some of them were programed and planned out, but then others were just chance meetings.
00:18:46:04 - 00:19:05:07
John Simmerman
And then, and then you also took the time to also, share the story with a lot of children. So talk a little bit about the human factor of this of, of the, the people that you, you know, kind of coordinated to meet as well as those chance meetings and then also, speaking with children along the way.
00:19:05:10 - 00:19:29:24
Sara Dykman
Yeah. So, my other trips that I've done often involves, going to schools and talking to kids. And so I did have that focus in the beginning, but then about maybe like a quarter of the way through my trip, I just realized the monarchs were up against so much, and the reality was just so brutal. And I was so mad at the world.
00:19:29:27 - 00:19:52:26
Sara Dykman
And so I wanted to use my voice to help in a bigger way. And so I started giving presentations to nature centers and at libraries. And that just opened up this whole other network of folks and I didn't charge for my presentations. I would just ask, I just need a place to shower. And so I would. I stayed with, I think, 68 families on my trip that most of them I had never met before.
00:19:52:28 - 00:20:16:20
Sara Dykman
And so that was just a way of, of connecting. And also those 68 people are often the people that were on the ground, fighting. You know, I wasn't actually helping the monarchs in a lot of ways. I wasn't putting milkweed in the ground. I wasn't protecting public space or wild spaces. But I got to see all these people that cared and were fighting, and that really just helped kind of calm the anger.
00:20:16:23 - 00:20:33:00
Sara Dykman
And then I met folks like this man who just stopped me on the side of the road and asked me what I'm doing. And sometimes I would be very annoyed and would not want to talk. And it's just like hot and I'm hot and tired. But, often those encounters are what you remember more than any of the miles.
00:20:33:00 - 00:20:37:12
Sara Dykman
And this guy asked if I wanted ice cream and I won't forget him.
00:20:37:15 - 00:20:45:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. And, and to that point, I mean, you. And here's a trend. Is this another ice cream?
00:20:45:28 - 00:20:48:00
Sara Dykman
Yeah. I eat a lot of ice cream.
00:20:48:02 - 00:21:19:19
John Simmerman
Yeah. Good move to, But yeah, to your point, I mean, one of the the endearing things about the book two or some of those stories of where, you would have that conversation, they would say, what? What are you doing? And you would explain why you're doing it, what you're doing and why you're doing it. And I think that that's just so it's so beautiful when you really step back and think about it, because it gives you that opportunity, you know, to try to share the vision, share what you're doing.
00:21:19:22 - 00:21:33:26
John Simmerman
And it it crosses nationalities, it crosses, political divides. It gives it's like re humanizing that that interaction talking about right.
00:21:33:28 - 00:21:53:19
Sara Dykman
Yeah. And the monarchs are so good at that too. They're so democratic. There's not a lot of animals in the world that you don't have to drive a car to go see, you know, in a national park or in another country or a zoo. Even, the monarchs come to everyone. So I saw them in small. I saw them in farm fields in Texas.
00:21:53:19 - 00:22:03:12
Sara Dykman
I saw them at, suburban schools in Omaha. I saw them in New York City. And so they really they really let everyone be part of this migration.
00:22:03:14 - 00:22:14:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I love this shot here, too, because it's you've got the caterpillar in the foreground on the on the milkweed, and it looks like you're getting off. Yeah. It's like.
00:22:14:05 - 00:22:38:20
Sara Dykman
Oh. It's like you go a few more. This is like this picture is a classic awesome picture of a caterpillar being a cool caterpillar doing super amazing things. You can see how the caterpillar, actually cut the leaf vein so that the, the leaf they're currently eating is like, bent. And that's to stop the flow of the milky latex that gives milkweed its name.
00:22:38:22 - 00:22:54:28
Sara Dykman
But then if you keep going on more like this is just what we're up against. And so it's like one minute you see the world through the caterpillar's eyes and you think, yes, there's all this habitat here. Perfect. And then five minutes later you're getting kicked in the face. And I was going ten miles an hour. I couldn't escape that.
00:22:54:28 - 00:23:15:12
Sara Dykman
You can't just drive fast and turn on the radio and ignore what's happening. You're just right there. And I was just. I was so mad so much of the time. Because it's just not fair. That's the last habitat these monarchs have, especially in places like Iowa, in Nebraska, where it's just corn from road to road.
00:23:15:14 - 00:23:31:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And it's so senseless to and I suspect a big part of what you're trying to do, and we're trying to do with this is, is education of trying to, you know, say to folks, hey, hold off on that. Don't know that.
00:23:31:16 - 00:24:10:22
Sara Dykman
Right. And it's not that we can't mow like the if we think about the prairie as a system, they bison were mowing the prairie forever. So the prairie is set up to get mowed, quote unquote. The key is thinking about monarchs when we're thinking about our mowing regime. So like, right now, it's fall and the every single monarch that's been that's going to fly to Mexico has to arrive fat enough, having eaten as much nectar as possible to survive all winter, just living off their fat reserves and so if we mow Texas and Missouri right now, we're mowing away all the nectar sources.
00:24:10:24 - 00:24:29:18
Sara Dykman
If we wait until October, when they're gone, then the plants have gone to seed. The nectar is, you know, has been produced, the seeds have been, set and then you mow. But this is yeah, like this picture. It's unacceptable. Like, this is the monarchs planet. We have to learn to share. We have to learn to find places.
00:24:29:18 - 00:24:49:17
Sara Dykman
I'm not. I'm not saying we can't have grass. I'm not saying we can't, you know, have picnics or soccer fields or corn for. For what we need corn for. But, like, there has to be some give. And we've just taken and taken and taken and like, we've just we've left the monarchs nothing. And that's just not okay.
00:24:49:22 - 00:24:51:24
Sara Dykman
It's not okay. Yeah.
00:24:51:27 - 00:25:19:22
John Simmerman
One of the things that did and here's, here's you speaking in front of a group of children here, one of the things that, has been emerging on my channel, I've noticed, especially traveling around the world, interviewing city staff that are building out the bicycle networks. One of the things that I started to notice is that there has been a commitment from many of these cities to, a sort of de pave a little bit, create a little bit more nature.
00:25:19:24 - 00:25:42:25
John Simmerman
And in that, you know, in those areas, they're, they're thinking now about, stormwater runoff and they're thinking about, you know, having rain gardens and they're not planting turfgrass grass in there. They're actually, you know, figuring out, okay, what are some of the, you know, you know, wild indigenous, flowering, you know, wildflowers that could help with some of this.
00:25:42:25 - 00:26:06:11
John Simmerman
And so I can't tell you how many times this this summer I spent two months in Europe. Filming over there and meeting with folks and was just blown away, especially, you know, since I've been back year after year after year over the past ten years to see this. And I'm like, I saw more wildflowers blooming in, of all places like Utrecht in the Netherlands.
00:26:06:13 - 00:26:29:15
John Simmerman
And this is. Yeah. No, we we've we this is like a move that the city is doing to try to bring more, you know, more pollinators back and to have more, you know, a wilder sort of approach to it. So what used to be turf grass, what used to be this stuff is now like wild and flowering. And I thought about, you know, like, yeah, I gotta I gotta mention this to Sarah.
00:26:29:17 - 00:26:49:19
Sara Dykman
Yeah. That's awesome. And it's a good point to like monarchs also share this need that cyclists have where you can't just have the start and the end be good. Like if there's a nice bike lane in one town and there's a nice bike lane in the other town, but then there's a scary bridge in the middle. Well, I no one can no one can do that.
00:26:49:19 - 00:27:13:15
Sara Dykman
It's, I mean or very few people will want to. And so the monarchs are the same. You can have a a pollinator garden here and a pollinator garden there. But if they're not connected by suitable habitat or by safety, then it's kind of worthless. So finding these ways of making corridors is really important. And people are also doing that with interstates, with roads, bike paths would be awesome too.
00:27:13:15 - 00:27:17:02
Sara Dykman
And I mean, biking on a bike path of flowers is awesome.
00:27:17:04 - 00:27:48:17
John Simmerman
Oh, I love it. I mean, it's it's one of the things that makes makes it so, you know, rich and enjoyable for sure. Talk a little bit about that interaction that takes place with students. I mean, I was thinking about this earlier today. It's like, in some ways, this is this is kind of a very interesting and and and cool and maybe even a little bit, easier task because you're talking about butterflies, you're talking about these beautiful, you know, things in nature.
00:27:48:19 - 00:28:06:27
John Simmerman
It'd be one thing if you were trying to, you know, educate about the value of of a cockroach. And and I'm sure there are some for sure. They have their place, too. But how much of that, like, really helps with this? Because I think it's probably pretty universal with kids that it's like, oh, we're talking butterflies.
00:28:07:01 - 00:28:08:02
John Simmerman
Yay!
00:28:08:04 - 00:28:30:04
Sara Dykman
Yeah, butterflies and bikes. I always say I'm living the like a ten year old's dream. But yeah, I call monarchs gateway bugs because it happens so consistently that people will plant a milkweed for monarchs for the because they want to see a bright yellow or bright orange. Excuse me, butterfly. And then they'll see the caterpillars, and then they'll kind of fall in love with the beauty of a caterpillar.
00:28:30:07 - 00:28:56:02
Sara Dykman
And then while they're looking for caterpillars, they see the spider and they see how cute they are. And then they start to see all the other creatures, and you just sort of, like, had your hand held and then like, it's okay to, like, come into this world. It's not so scary. And so, yeah, the, the monarchs are because they because anyone can help, because they go to so many different places and because they're beautiful, they really just like, offer people a stepping stone in the nature.
00:28:56:08 - 00:29:01:23
Sara Dykman
So yeah, they're they're a spokesperson for sure as well. Yeah.
00:29:01:25 - 00:29:30:21
John Simmerman
When you look at, you know, the challenges ahead of us in terms of, you know, climate change and global warming and how quickly things are kind of moving. I keep wondering about this is like, especially here in, in, in Texas, where we just have brutally, brutally hot summers and, you know, to the point where you're like, okay, you know, we're we're basically cooking the, you know, the outside environment.
00:29:30:24 - 00:29:39:02
John Simmerman
You know, this could be just devastatingly hard on, you know, populations such as monarch butterflies and colonies.
00:29:39:04 - 00:30:03:28
Sara Dykman
Yeah. The the extremes for all creatures is very hard. And it's just a matter of time before we'll be too extreme. The the monitors are really cool. And the fact that they're, they're hyper resilient. So because they spread out, you know, they're in lot well in Mexico, they're they're fairly vulnerable to us. You know, habitat loss. But they have a lot of places to go.
00:30:04:00 - 00:30:30:03
Sara Dykman
And because they spread out, maybe it's a bad year in eastern Texas, but a good year in western Texas. And so those these opportunities for them to rebound. And because it's a five generation migration potentially if one female arrives in Texas and she can find monarchs tend to lay about one egg per milkweed. So and they lay about 500 eggs so she can find 500 milkweeds, then there's a good chance that 2 or 3 of those will survive.
00:30:30:03 - 00:30:54:00
Sara Dykman
And thus it's like double the population in one generation. And by the time you get to the fifth generation, you've got a lot more monarchs. So there's a chance, there's a good chance for this high resiliency, high, high, recovery. But it only works if each monarch can find 500 milkweeds. And right now they can't. And I buy through Texas in 20.
00:30:54:06 - 00:31:25:14
Sara Dykman
Well, my trip was in 2017 and then I did a motorcycle tour, in 2022, I think. And I just, I couldn't believe the difference how much development had happened, how much habitat loss had taken place. So it's just. Yeah, this this map here, this graph here. Excuse me, has that dotted green line and, that's a sustainable monarch population, which is about six hectares or about 14.5 acres of monarchs in Mexico.
00:31:25:16 - 00:31:35:23
Sara Dykman
They don't count numbers. They count the area they take up. But in order to get to that green line, scientists believe we need to plant 1.8 billion stems of milkweed.
00:31:35:25 - 00:31:36:19
John Simmerman
Wow.
00:31:36:21 - 00:31:53:19
Sara Dykman
Yeah. So that's like, all hands on deck. We cannot just wait for national parks and state parks and wildlife refuges to get this going. Like it's the only way we'll have a resilient monarch population is that they have lots of milkweed choices, and that means milkweed everywhere.
00:31:53:21 - 00:32:10:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. So one of the projects that you have, you know, ventured out on is like trying to collect better data down in Mexico. Does it make sense for us to play that, that video right now about funded? Okay, let's let's.
00:32:10:22 - 00:32:12:04
Sara Dykman
Do that action.
00:32:12:07 - 00:32:13:19
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:32:13:22 - 00:32:58:09
Sara Dykman
Hello. I'm Sarah. After biking alongside Monarchs and Milkweed for 10,000 miles, I launched my book, bicycling with butterflies. Meanwhile, I spent my winters in Mexico making friends, celebrating weddings, picnicking, farming beans, painting houses, enjoying birthdays, learning to cook and bake and build and somersault. And of course, visiting the monarchs. The more time I spent with the butterflies, the more I learned, the more I learned, the more questions I had, which is why I started a research project and is why today I'm asking for your support.
00:32:58:11 - 00:33:28:22
Sara Dykman
I'm raising money to continue my research. Understanding the overwintering monarch streaming behavior. Now you have probably two reactions. It's either yeah, sign me up or it's, streaming behavior. The quick explanation most of the winter, monarchs in Mexico are inactive. Then each spring, their winter home starts to warm up and dry out. This spurs the monarchs into action in the weeks leading up to their migration north.
00:33:28:29 - 00:34:08:13
Sara Dykman
The monarchs leave their clusters daily and stream down the mountains, likely to seek water during nectar and a jump start their reproductive development. As the season progresses, they stream further and further. They stream beyond the most protected core of the forest and into the communities where people live. People like Lola, Leticia, Maria, Dawn, Alfonso and Ava, who are just some of the people I trained and then employed in 2020 to count monarchs that stream past specific transects near their homes three times daily, with a watch, a notebook and a weather logger placed at each house.
00:34:08:15 - 00:34:39:21
Sara Dykman
These families and I were able to conduct the first ever research on streaming behavior. In just six weeks, we recorded 38,000 streaming monarchs and their corresponding weather conditions. Such an accomplishment would have been impossible for one person alone at the end of the season. I crunched the numbers from this preliminary study and found that basically, whoa. Yeah, my methodology works and can be expanded out and repeated, which is exactly what I want to do.
00:34:39:23 - 00:34:59:28
Sara Dykman
I want to return to Mexico this winter and repeat my study only I want to go bigger. I want to study monarchs the entire overwintering season, and I want to invite not just ten families to participate, but 21. I also want to add these really cool data loggers so that we can add wind speed, wind direction, and solar radiation to the mix.
00:35:00:00 - 00:35:24:04
Sara Dykman
Continuing to collect this data will be a win for participants and their families, because they'll get to be scientists and work from home to earn a modest income. It will also be a win for the butterflies because it creates sustainable jobs, which help take extractive pressures like logging off their forest and continuing will help answer questions about overwintering ecology and climate change effects, which of course is a win for science.
00:35:24:07 - 00:35:49:11
Sara Dykman
It's basically a win win win project. The monarchs have shown me that there is this passionate team of people rallying to give the monarchs a future. I'm calling on this network today to help fund my project in Mexico. Every donation counts, just like every monarch counts. So please give what you can share with your friends and family. And thank you so, so much for helping make this project possible.
00:35:49:18 - 00:35:56:01
John Simmerman
Love it, love it. So what's the update on that? Obviously that was produced a little while ago.
00:35:56:03 - 00:36:23:08
Sara Dykman
Is that those data loggers or the two has the weight of my existing. But they're awesome. Yeah. So I've done two more, two more winners, I guess. I got up to 21 women counting. We have so much data. This last year, I trained, a friend and now colleague to kind of do my job for me because I got a permanent job in California, and we have a meeting tomorrow.
00:36:23:08 - 00:36:50:29
Sara Dykman
We've started working with the nonprofit as well to get, a little bit more legal on the taxes and all that, stuff. But yeah, it's been really cool. Like last year, the monarch population was the second lowest recorded. We had less than a hectare of monarchs, and the data was just there, like the women were counting way, way, way, way fewer monarchs.
00:36:50:29 - 00:37:13:24
Sara Dykman
And they had the year before. And so I'm hoping I just could keep going and we can keep getting this baseline information and, and add it to our knowledge. And I just have to share one story. They had, like a picnic or a meeting with food. I wasn't there, but I called in and they were all the women were just such scientists talking about what they'd noticed.
00:37:13:24 - 00:37:18:16
Sara Dykman
And what they were curious about. And it was really awesome.
00:37:18:18 - 00:37:37:02
John Simmerman
That is so cool. Not only are you are you, like, engaging them and giving them an opportunity to earn a little bit, but you're you're also sparking that that knowledge of science and and getting them interested in the world around them like that. That's that's so incredibly cool.
00:37:37:05 - 00:37:47:15
Sara Dykman
Yeah. I'm happy. I just need I'm working. If anyone knows anyone that can make apps, I've been trying to figure out a way to make an app so that we can just do that, do the data without data sheets because.
00:37:47:17 - 00:37:48:21
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:37:48:23 - 00:37:55:14
Sara Dykman
I was entering, I was it took me about ten hours a week to enter the data that I would get. Yeah. It's a lot.
00:37:55:16 - 00:38:16:01
John Simmerman
I we're manifesting that we're putting this out here on YouTube. Folks, if you're watching this or listening to this, because it's also going out in podcast, traditional podcast format as well. If you know people who are app developers who can help out with this great cause, please reach out to Sarah and let her know.
00:38:16:04 - 00:38:28:06
John Simmerman
And so, yeah, we we've got the counting, of the monarchs that are out there, there is a I believe there's a donate button here, right? Yeah. Support the monarchs. You can make a donation here.
00:38:28:06 - 00:38:30:12
Sara Dykman
Through, GoFundMe. Me.
00:38:30:15 - 00:38:41:05
John Simmerman
Okay. Fantastic. And that that is able to be done there. So please consider supporting any other bike adventures coming up for you.
00:38:41:07 - 00:39:02:16
Sara Dykman
I'm glad. Permanent job. It's hard. My first permanent job ever, but I'm. I just moved to closer to the office, and I'm now I'm a 24 minute bike ride from the office, so I get to commute by bike. It is a doozy of 400ft of climbing each way, and, two and a half miles. So our three and a half miles.
00:39:02:19 - 00:39:07:18
Sara Dykman
But it feels good to be back on a bike. So that's my adventure. Finally getting to commute again.
00:39:07:20 - 00:39:14:07
John Simmerman
Finally getting the commute again. I guess going downhill, going home. Probably a little bit easier. No.
00:39:14:10 - 00:39:21:03
Sara Dykman
It's straight down and then straight up and then, on the way home, straight down and then straight up.
00:39:21:05 - 00:39:22:27
John Simmerman
Oh, there you go. Yeah.
00:39:23:00 - 00:39:35:19
Sara Dykman
Yeah. 23 mile an hour speed limit. Cars go 50, but I feel like a little more like, confident in my ability to, you know, hit the road because it's posted at 25. Yeah.
00:39:35:23 - 00:39:56:03
John Simmerman
So yeah. Wow. Any final thoughts from your end about about, you know, the work that you're doing, the challenges ahead and, and how people can continue to engage with, with this challenge that we have in front of us.
00:39:56:05 - 00:40:21:07
Sara Dykman
Oh, I mean, if you're speaking about biking, that's the one challenge. And then protecting the monarchs is another. I think just when you're out and about, notice the world around you. Be curious, ask questions. And I think, like, if anyone has a an idea for a trip or an idea to be, you know, part of the solution, like, don't worry about being an expert.
00:40:21:07 - 00:40:46:07
Sara Dykman
Don't worry about getting it all right. Like the pieces will fall together. The failures will be funny stories down the road and you'll meet lots of people. Like trying and working on. My projects have just given me so many stories and opportunities and, I mean, quite frankly, like, I have a book, I have money from this, so, like, you never know where things will lead, but you gotta you got to start.
00:40:46:07 - 00:40:49:13
Sara Dykman
The first mile is always the hardest. Yeah, yeah.
00:40:49:15 - 00:41:09:01
John Simmerman
And these, these last few photos too is, is kind of like one of the things that I love so much about this book was like the stories and the vignettes that you had about people who were going out of their way to, you know, create environments which encourage, again, those pollinators to come and hang out.
00:41:09:03 - 00:41:28:03
Sara Dykman
Yeah. And like, I guess I could end with this picture here is of, Nadia in Columbia, Missouri. And her yard was just this amazing Mecca. Like so much life was there. Only because of the choices she made. And then at her neighbor's yard, there was these little common milkweeds poking up, and she said that the the neighbors used to mow everything.
00:41:28:06 - 00:41:53:10
Sara Dykman
And then they learned if there's no milkweed, there's no monarchs, so they mow around those milkweeds. And so literally, we need people kind of breaking status quo, trying new things, reinventing what beautiful is, on every street. And then that's how our idea spread. That's how the milkweed spreads. That's how change happens. So if you can be that brave person to start a new way of thinking, I, I would be grateful.
00:41:53:10 - 00:41:54:14
Sara Dykman
The monarchs would be grateful.
00:41:54:14 - 00:42:17:18
John Simmerman
So that's what's funny, too, about this particular photo is, you see, you know, some turf grass, and then you see some, you know, some plants, you know, popping up. There's a few houses here in my neighborhood where every spring, you know, their, their turf grass is, is there, and they continue to mow their turf grass. But then in the spring, a wildflowers start popping up.
00:42:17:18 - 00:42:42:00
John Simmerman
And because the wildflowers are so cherished and beloved here, they let it grow. And so they stop mowing their lawn at that. At that point in time. And eventually, once the the wildflowers are up and they're starting to bloom and everything, they'll go back in, they still kind of like, you know, do a little spot mowing. And so it looks a lot like this where it's like the turf grass has been mowed, but then the wildflowers are like doing their thing.
00:42:42:00 - 00:42:53:15
John Simmerman
And, you know, I'd prefer the whole thing be, you know, planted and whole bunch of, you know, wilderness, but, this this makes me laugh because that reminds me of that.
00:42:53:17 - 00:43:04:00
Sara Dykman
Yeah, I think I think a few paths, a place to play with a dog. That's all good. And, a chaotic garden can look very intentional with a few good mowed edges.
00:43:04:02 - 00:43:21:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it, I love it. This has been so much fun. Sarah, thank you so very much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast for this little joyride. On your journey following the, the streaming and migration patterns of the monarch butterfly.
00:43:21:27 - 00:43:24:16
Sara Dykman
Yeah, that was fun to chat. Thank you.
00:43:24:18 - 00:43:39:10
John Simmerman
He thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Sarah Diamond. If you did, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribed to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.
00:43:39:10 - 00:43:59:18
John Simmerman
And if you're enjoying this content here on the active Tens channel, please consider supporting my efforts. It's easy to do. Just head on over to Active towns.org, click on the support button, and if you decide to become a Patreon supporter, patrons, you do get early and ad free access to all this content. And, I have to tell you, it means so incredibly much to me.
00:43:59:18 - 00:44:30:10
John Simmerman
I simply could not do this without your support. So please consider becoming an active towns ambassador. Well, until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you objectivity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again, sending a huge thank you out to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patreon. Buy me a coffee YouTube. Super! Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the Active Towns store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.
00:44:30:12 - 00:44:31:19
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much!