Essay
How Are the Butterflies Doing?
A UCLA sustainability elective, a conservationist's simple recurring question, and what it taught me about caring for something small and fragile.
I didn't expect my sustainability elective to leave me emotional. I'm currently taking an elective called Leaders in Sustainability at UCLA, offered through UCLA Environment and taught by Professor Travis Longcore.
What stood out immediately is that Professor Longcore isn't just teaching from books. He has spent years working in the real world, in conservation, in cities, and with communities that are often ignored. You can feel that experience in the way he speaks.
He shared a story about Arthur Bonner, someone he knew personally and worked closely with on a conservation project protecting a rare butterfly species, work that was featured in a National Geographic documentary. Professor Longcore shared that every time he spoke to Arthur, Arthur would always ask the same question: "How are the butterflies doing?"
That question kept coming back to me. There was something powerful about it, how caring for something small and fragile, and watching new life grow, left a lifelong mark on him.
It made me think differently about sustainability. It's not only about policies, reports, or big systems. Sometimes, sustainability is about connection, about purpose, about how caring for life outside ourselves can slowly change who we are. That moment in class was emotional and grounding. It reminded me that leadership in sustainability isn't abstract. It's human.
