It’s almost that time of year for San Antonians to migrate to Brackenridge Park for the Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival, a whimsical, educational experience highlighting the importance of monarch butterflies and pollinators and the challenges they navigate each year.
The eighth annual festival will take place at the park’s Pecan Grove on Oct. 7 and will highlight San Antonio’s commitment to being a Monarch Champion City.
Blooming with Birdie, which offers online and in-person educational experiences, is hosting the event this year in partnership with the Brackenridge Park Conservatory. The free, all-ages event will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Registration is recommended, but not required.
The festival’s aim is to educate the community about pollinators and the challenges they face because of climate change. By 2040, San Antonio is likely to experience over 20 more days of 100 degrees each year and three fewer inches of rain annually.
Fall migration for butterflies and pollinators, which takes place during October, will be challenging this year, making the annual festival more significant, said festival founder Monika Maeckle.
“There’s not a lot of nectar, and nectar is what they need right now,” she said. “Their goal as they fly south is to build up their fat storage so they can make it through the winter, and if there’s not any nectar, they don’t have anything to nectar on.”
The annual festival was born from a list of action items the National Wildlife Federation provided to cities that commit to the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge. There are hundreds of pledge cities across the country, but only a dozen Monarch Champion Cities, and San Antonio was the first, Maeckle said on the podcast “big city, small town” with Robert Rivard.
Last year, the festival brought together more than 20 nonprofit organizations and educational partners to educate the community about the importance of the monarch and other pollinators. This year, it will bring together over 35 partners.
Ashley Bird, this year’s festival organizer, said the festival will be whimsical and include stilt walkers, monarch butterfly dancers, butterfly tagging and a migration obstacle course that will offer children a hands-on experience of butterfly development and migration.
Bird said children who participate in the obstacle course will be shown how difficult it is for pollinators to find nectar. The objective is to inspire behavior change that supports the ecosystem.
“Pollinators make one out of every three bites of food [we eat] possible,” she said. “Without them and without making sure we’re taking care of our ecosystem, we wouldn’t have a lot of the food that we have. Educating about the monarchs is simply a theme to connect our community to the ecosystem itself.”
Mayor Ron Nirenberg will attend the event and tag a butterfly, Bird said.
Around the park, San Antonio River Authority staffers dressed as “litter bugs” will pick up trash and educate visitors about the harmful effects littering has on pollinators, while a “pollinator posse” will “freeze” visitors by gently tagging them with a ball, illustrating the dangers of pesticides.
The San Antonio World Heritage Office also will host a hands-on cooking demo, teaching people how to make a pollinator-inspired dish, and a Día De Los Muertos altar will be presented by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México San Antonio.
There also will be free plant and tree giveaways.
“The monarch serves as a gateway bug because it’s so magical and it’s so beautiful,” said Bird. “Through that magic and through its beauty, it engages us and opens us up to a world and an ecosystem of so many pollinators that make all of life possible.”
This story has been updated to correctly state that Blooming with Birdie is hosting the event this year in partnership with the Brackenridge Park Conservatory.
The Brackenridge Park Conservancy is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report. For a full list of business members, click here.
