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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: The butterfly effect: Why the endangered monarch is a Jewish issue
Description: Last week, an international conservation body declared the monarch butterfly an endangered species. But that didn't surprise Carol Pasternak, who writes under the pseudonym "The Monarch Crusader". For years, she's used her garden in Toronto as a launching pad to teach Canadians about the importance and habits of monarchs, which—like many Canadian Jews—spend their winters flying thousands of kilometres south to warmer climes.
Yet between climate change and rampant real estate development, butterfly habitats have been decimated in recent decades, and the insect's population has decreased 75 percent, according to some estimates. That's why Pasternak has tran...