Butterflies in My Backyard Lecture and Q&A

Join our discussion with Victor DeMasi on May 16! 

Victor DeMasi is an extremely active member of The Pollinator Pathway. He was a wetland conservation officer in his hometown of Redding for 20 years and is presently a curatorial affiliate at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven. He busies himself with preserving open space in town and preserving butterflies in the museum. His fieldwork with butterflies contributed almost a thousand citations to the recently published Connecticut Butterfly Atlas. He has contributed articles to scientific publications and his mark-recapture studies with Swallowtail butterflies was recently cited in the book Swallowtails of the Americas. During the pandemic he started doing a pollinator survey of two meadows in Redding CT. Recent butterfly study trips with his spouse Roanna, a photographer, include several times to the Amazon forest in Guyana, Nicaragua, and yearly studies in the montane in California assessing the impact of climate change on that fauna. His work in South America was recently featured in The Yale Environmental News.

DeMasi is also 40 year owner of Monarch Painting, a decorative painting firm in Redding, Connecticut, which specializes, in faux finishes and trompe l’oeil.  His murals often feature natural history subjects such as native wild flowers and butterflies.