Paper short abstract:

When the monarch butterfly migration was confirmed in 1975, Canadians, Mexicans, and U.S. Americans came together to protect habitat along the transnational route. This presentation examines the power asymmetries, internally and externally, that helped and hindered international collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

A transnational network of citizen-scientists through the Insect Migration Association confirmed the monarch butterfly migration in 1975. At three conferences in 1981, 1986, and 1997, state officials, lepidopterists, campesinos, journalists, and others gathered to discuss threats along the migratory route and to propose solutions. Because of the Mexican debt crisis of the early 1980s, they settled on neoliberal solution for the overwintering grounds: meager payments to ejidatarios for conserved forest and harsh fines for illegal logging. Due to these shortcomings, non-governmental organizations tried to fill the void. While successful in building meaningful partnerships, they lacked the purse strings of the federal largesse. When Roundup Ready crops became implicated in the disappearance of the host plant milkweed and other pollinators in the 1990s, Monsanto executives blamed conservation problems in Mexico as justification to continue spraying Roundup herbicide on fields of the U.S. Midwest and Canada. The presentation focuses on how to leverage transnational relationships for national resources.