WINDSOR, Ontario – Hundreds gathered here in a festive atmosphere for the ceremonial start of the Monarch Express, a joint initiative by Kansas City Southern and Canadian Pacific to help save the Monarch butterfly.
A gleaming new dark green boxcar, with a colorful Monarch painted on one side and the slogan “Save the Monarch, Join the 60,000 Tree Challenge” on the other, provided the backdrop as speakers from the railways and members of Rotary International launched the three-country drive. The event was held at CP’s Windsor Yard, which connects to the 1.6-mile CP-owned rail tunnel under the Detroit River to Detroit.
From there the boxcar will make several stops across the United States including in Chicago, Kansas City, Mo., and Laredo, Texas, as it follows the traditional route of the migrating Monarch to its winter home in Mexico. There will be several Mexican stops as well including in Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and finally at the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Michoacán. The railroads, car leasing company GATX, and other partners announced the effort last month [see “KCS, Canadian Pacific, GATX launch …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 5, 2022].
The project was a natural for KCS and CP since their combined routes roughly parallel the 3,000-mile trek of the Monarch, considered one of the world’s great pollinators. Just outside Windsor at Point Pelee, Canada’s most southern mainland point, hundreds of thousands of Monarchs have gathered each fall for their flight to Mexico, where the butterflies use air currents, the Earth’s magnetic pull, and the sun’s position on a journey that sees their culmination in Mexico around that country’s Day of the Dead feast in early November.
David Eaton, KCS’s vice president, sales and marketing in Monterrey and a past president of that city’s Rotary Club — and the man steering the project — told Trains News Wire the planned merger “encapsulates the unity of North America” by serving Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The $31 billion transaction still requires approval by the United States Surface Transportation Board.
Rotary has taken on the initiative to raise awareness of the butterflies endangered status, two steps away from extinction. Naturalists say the Monarch has only a 10 % chance of persisting above the extinction threshold over the next 30 years. Critical to the global food supply and natural ecosystems the cause of their “alarming” decline is manyfold, including deforestation and climate change, Rotary says.
At the Windsor gathering, the “Mariposa” (butterfly) boxcar, built at GATX in Mexico and painted in Hearne, Texas, was hooked to an also shining CP 7005, a rebuilt EMD SD70ACU.
Eaton said it was “very easy” to get support from GATX. The company was promoting a new line of 60-foot, high-cube Plate F boxcars “and the environmental benefits of the boxcar compared to trucking,” he said.
As the train travels south, it will also be seeking $100,000 for the Save the Monarch Butterfly 60,000 Tree Challenge. The money will plant 60,000 oyamel trees at the El Rosario sanctuary to help reestablish the Monarch population. Beside the boxcar’s brilliant orange, black and white Monarch rendition is a crowd-finding QR code.
Rotary and its partners including freight and trade coalition NASCO invite the public to also join the campaign through Operation Pollination at www.operationpollination.net
Surely the graffiti “artists” will not vandalize this car.