14 Wednesday, August 28, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Tales from a Sisters Naturalist by Jim Anderson A community to which we belong My wife, Sue, and I just returned from an event we have been a part of for over five years 4 helping with the annual butterfly sur- vey at Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California, just south of Klamath Falls. In fact, it was Sue who sparked the interest in keep- ing track of the butterflies of Lava Beds. We were regu- lar visitors there when she obtained monarch butterfly tags from the University of Toronto back in the early 1990s. Our kids were just the right age to start working on butterflies, and that long- legged eldest son of ours, Reuben, could outrun and net the fastest butterfly on the monument. In those days, Lava Beds was THE place to visit to see monarchs. The native narrow leaf milkweed on the monu- ment and adjacent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge was/is the perfect food source for the monarch caterpillars, and native wildflowers for nectaring were very abun- dant. Most winters delivered plenty of water in the form of snow, and in summer, thunderstorms added their moisture. Years later a lightning storm hit the monument resulting in a wildfire that destroyed much of the mon- arch breeding habitat. It took several years for the milk- weed to regenerate. In spite of the recovery, many of the plants with larvae on them along the monument roads were being mowed down for