Windsor butterfly enthusiast embraces healing with monarchs

A local butterfly enthusiast has found a personal connection to monarch butterflies after four year of breeding and releasing them.

Danielle Richer from Windsor, raised and released 81 monarch butterflies this year, which was more than triple the amount from previous years. She said usually she would only find and raise three or four. Her fortune changed when she discovered one of her butterflies laying eggs. 

"I had been looking for eggs but I didn't really know what to look for. This time, I got to see what it was and as I kept looking for new leaves, I would find more and more eggs," Richer said.

This summer, Richer discovered an unusual connection to one of her monarch butterflies.

On Aug. 26, while she was outside witnessing the birth of a monarch butterfly, she was informed her brother Vincent had passed away. 

"It just felt like there was a connection between that moment and this one," she said.

Over the next few weeks, while grieving the death of her brother, she raised the butterfly as the others. When it came time to release it, she said the monarch stood on her finger, which is very rare. 

"For me, it was kind of like, I'm saying goodbye to my brother," she said. 

While she still has eight more butterflies to raise and release this year, she described that experience as "mystical moment."

"You can't help wondering that there is more to life, more to the universe than we know," Richer said.

Declining population

For several years, monarch butterflies have been declining in the region. Earlier this year Leo Sylvestri, founder of Monarch Enthusiasts of Windsor-Essex, told CBC News that the decline was due to decreasing milk weed and increasing pesticides and insecticides in farming and gardening. 

Richer said planting local milk weed and avoiding pesticides are good things to keep in mind. 

"It is single handedly the best thing we can do as people, as humans, to help the monarch," she said.