At Plainfield East, student Brooke Robinson, performs surgery on butterflies and saves their lives.
The Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network (IBMN) is the state program which monitors butterflies engaging in communities. Scientists then collect data on butterfly populations to track trends and inform conservation efforts.
The surgery part is mainly performed by keeping the butterfly calm, which is relatively easy, and laying a finger down on their back which doesn’t pain them at all. Then, they swap out their old wings for new ones using needles and such.
The program brings scientists together to help conserve butterflies, check population, and track environmental trends to keep butterflies active in our lives. Although at first butterflies may not seem too important because the most common thing they do and are known for is pollination, they serve the same purposes as bees do for life such as keeping plant life healthy.
In the program is a junior student of Plainfield East who has been performing surgery on butterflies since the age of four. Outside IBMN, she also raises butterflies of her own at home.
Robinson would raise caterpillars and when they were hatching, sometimes the butterflies would get stuck in their cocoon shell. Brooke would have to take action and help butterflies hatch.
Robinson, being a student of Plainfield East, obviously isn’t a full time employee at the program of Illinois, but she does great work there, even getting a promotion.
After performing her first surgery as a child, she was ready to do this professionally. Of course, being little means big imagination. A butterfly she was working on supposedly had a sense of talent, and she had taught it how to spin.
Another butterfly patient she had worked on couldn’t fly, and no matter what she did to help, its wing would only flutter. And by all means did she keep it to herself and name it Flutter.
In recent years, the state program had found a decrease in population of over 80-90% of monarch butterflies they were specifically tracking on a trip migrating to Mexico. The butterflies came back with a count of around 60-80, down to 14. Although a struggle then, this year they had an increase from the 60-80, to over 120.
With the impact butterflies have on our planet, mainly pollinating, the work butterflies do make them extremely important and the work the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network is doing is really helping out our lives.
