Western Monarch Butterflies: Protecting Our Pollinators

A monarch documentary and community conversation come to the Bay Theatre

On Morro Bay Boulevard. The Central Coast State Parks Association presents a special screening of Western Monarch Butterflies: Protecting Our Pollinators at the Bay Theatre on Monday, August 10, with doors at 5 PM and the film at 5:30. Directed by Ian A. Nelson, the documentary follows the western monarch’s perilous annual migration from the western slopes of the Rockies to the California coast, one of the most astonishing feats in nature, made on wings you could crush between two fingers.

The story it tells is urgent. Western monarch numbers once ran into the millions; in just a few decades they have dwindled to a fraction of that, a decline scientists read as a warning about pollinator health and the ecosystems that depend on it. But the film is not only a lament. It follows communities across the western United States restoring wild and urban habitat alike, making the case that anyone can be a conservationist and that what helps monarchs helps a whole range of native pollinators.

This lands close to home. Morro Bay sits on the monarchs’ overwintering map, with clusters gathering in the eucalyptus and cypress from roughly October through February at Morro Bay State Park, and at Sweet Springs and the Monarch Grove Natural Area across the back bay in Los Osos. Watching a film about the migration in a town the butterflies actually visit gives the subject a weight it would not have anywhere inland.

The evening opens with a short CCSPA film introducing the association’s work supporting the ten state parks of San Luis Obispo County through conservation, education, and expanded public access, and the screening is followed by a Q&A, community discussion, and reception. Tickets are $18. For more wildlife programs, films, and community events around the bay, see what is coming up on the event calendar.