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The Incredible Story of the Monarch Butterfly: Four Wings and a Prayer
BBC4 Sunday 17th March 9pm - 10pm
Every autumn a minor miracle occurs in Mexico. Millions of monarch butterflies arrive to spend the winter in the Michoacan pine forest after a 5,000km journey from their birthplace in Canada. The great mystery is how they achieve this mammoth once-in-a-lifetime migration over a continent they’ve never seen before.
Time-lapse film shows their always uncanny transmogrification from caterpillars, on the shores of Georgian Bay, before starting a hazardous flight across the Great Lakes and the United States. In Mexico, we meet poet Homero Aridjis who is campaigning to save the monarchs’ habitat from loggers.
Documentary charting the perilous journey of the Canadian insect, which flies more than 3,000 miles from its homeland to the rainforests of Mexico across land it has never seen. The programme explores how many never complete the task, and those that do never return. Based on the critically-acclaimed book by Sue Halpern, and narrated by Kristin Scott Thomas.
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