top of page
  • Andy Davis

That time I interviewed Lincoln Brower on a mountaintop in Mexico

Hello everyone,


I have something different to share with you in this post. Today I'm going to show you a video, from my personal files, of an interview I had made of the late Lincoln Brower some years ago. As most people know, Lincoln was a world-famous researcher of monarch butterflies, and an icon in the world of monarch conservation. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 86. Here is a link to a tribute to him in the New York Times (yes, the NYT - that's how legendary he was).


To set the stage for you, the year was 2007, in January. A team of researchers, including myself, and Lincoln, were on a joint research trip to visit the winter sanctuaries in Mexico. I have fond memories of this trip. I recall that over the course of a week we visited a number of colonies to collect our data and samples, etc., and we were all pretty busy most days. But there was one day that I recall where the entire research team was all together on top of one of the mountains, stopped for a snack. I happened to have my video camera with me and I asked Lincoln if we could do a quick interview while we waited. It wasn't a long chat, but looking back, I think this ended up being a real gem of a conversation. He touched on some of his fondest memories, his greatest research accomplishments, and what he sees as the most important research we need to have done. And, all of this, while standing in a cloud of monarchs!


It seemed a shame to have this footage just gathering dust in a drawer in my office, so I just now figured out how to upload it to youtube, and the result is below. Enjoy!



As you can tell, I left an extra minute of the video on here after the conversation, to give a feel for what it was like to be there in the colonies!


Anyway, hope you enjoyed this. By the way, stay tuned for more video interviews in the future!


Cheers


*****************************************************************************

Direct link to this blog entry:

*****************************************************************************

661 views

The science of monarch butterflies

A blog about monarchs, written by a monarch scientist, for people who love monarchs

bottom of page