"Ole Schell is helping to revive a once epic population of monarchs".
"When he was growing up in the coastal California village of Bolinas in the 1980s, Ole Schell remembers, the monarchs that returned each fall to their overwintering sites seemed "endless." They clustered in the eucalyptus and pine groves around town, sometimes in swarms so big that—Schell now recalls with embarrassment—he and his friends would shake the butterflies from the branches and watch them fly off by the hundreds. Along Terrace Avenue and at one vacant lot on Kale Road (yes, there's a Kale Road in the self-described "nature-loving town"), the clumps of monarchs appeared to number in the kajillions.
Schell eventually left home for broader horizons. He moved to New York City, where he worked as a documentary filmmaker. He traveled around the world for his various film projects. The monarchs of his childhood were a long way away.
In 2016, Schell moved back to his family's cattle ranch on the northern edge of Bolinas. That winter, he was shocked to spot only one or two butterflies. The absence was glaring. But many of the locals—who had experienced the monarch diminishment as a steady decline instead of a sudden disappearance—seemed less alarmed. When Schell asked his mother about it, she said, "Yeah, there just aren't really monarchs anymore.""
Advertisement 
