From Monarch, Page 3
What You Can Do to Help Monarchs • Plant a pollinator garden with locally appropriate flowering plants and native milkweed species. (See Xerces Society California plant list here ). Susie Vanderlip (See more tips on her blog: www.tinyurl.com/AllAboutMonarchs ) suggests planting at least 3-5 gallon- size milkweed and about the same number of flowering plants, that bloom at different times. Space them out as female monarchs like to spread their eggs out. Plants need plenty of sun and water. (Caution: Wash hands if you touch the milkweed leaves or a caterpillar as the oils are toxic to the human eye.) • Ensure any plants you purchase from nurseries are pesticide-free. • Do not use pesticide, fungicide, or herbicide on any milkweed plants or nectar plants as this can poison and kill monarch caterpillars and butterflies. Absolutely no pesticide should be used adjacent to overwintering sites during the overwintering period (October - March). • Become a community scientist by volunteering to collect data on monarchs and milkweed or help create butterfly habitats in public spaces • Useful links: monarchwatch.org xerces.org monarchjointventure.org www.westernmonarchadvocates.com Endangered Species Act. The comment period for the proposed rule published on Dec. 24, 2024, is open until May 19. Learn more about the reopened comment period. “Human beings are very destructive, but we’re also very caring when we need to be. Saving nature now needs to be intentional. We can’t take it for granted that all of this will be here,” said Sartore. “If you can’t save the most beautiful insect in North America. If you don’t even try, what hope is there for the other things?”
insecticides,” Sartore said. At his office building in Lincoln, Nebraska, a huge native prairie garden is filling in all the landscaped spaces. “It’s important that people start planting native, nectar bearing plants everywhere we can in order to save insects.” Orange County resident Susie Vanderlip is a volunteer Monarch Conservation Specialist for Monarch Watch, a University of Kansas-based education, conservation and research group. Vanderlip was inspired when she discovered monarch caterpillars in her back yard 15 years ago after an emergency appendectomy slowed her down. She started learning all about them, taking photos, and even writing a children’s book. “They literally float across the garden. I think people feel this connection to them in part because monarchs are so calm and you can get so close to them,” said Vanderlip. “Then, when I watched their metamorphosis it made me think about my own healing. I think it gives us all hope that the trials and tribulations of life will turn out to create something beautiful in our lives.” Vanderlip created a Facebook group with about 1,600 members throughout Southern California who share information. She also helps coordinate volunteers for projects, such as Dana Point’s campaign to plant 10,000 square feet of monarch habitat over 10 years in public spaces. And, of course, she cultivates her own monarch garden space. While she used to tag monarchs, California Fish and Wildlife
regulations now prohibit human contact with monarchs. Unfortunately, Vanderlip explained, when people raised large populations of monarchs in netted environments conservation professionals said it may do more harm than good. “Some people were raising 200 to 1,000 monarchs every season in an effort to create more monarch butterflies and then release them. That is not healthy conservation, because that means you’re collecting eggs and you’re not letting natural selection happen, in which normally one out of a thousand monarch eggs becomes a butterfly,” she said. Everyone is still encouraged to create monarch habitats. The Monarch Watch Waystation Program is nearing 50,000 registered habitats after almost 20 years. Monarch Watch also distributed 100,000 free milkweed plants last year. “However, we are still losing more monarch habitat each year than we are gaining through these efforts and others,” the website states. “We need to register 50,000 Monarch
Waystations every year (or every few months!) instead of every 20 years, and we need to distribute 1 million or more milkweed plants each year.” As Vanderlip pointed out, monarchs are a complex species and research on their decline and how to help them is ongoing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to list the monarch butterfly as threatened under the
Photo by Susie Vanderlip
Susie Vanderlip is a Monarch Conservation Specialist for Southern California for Monarch Watch. She is the author of a children’s photo storybook The Story of Chester about the butterfly life cycle, maintains a blog and Facebook group, and is available to speak about monarchs and butterfly habitat. For more information, go to www.MonarchButterflySpeaker.com
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