PSA, call to action for monarch conservation. This one’s easy!
I was at our Master naturalist conference and I attended a talk on butterfly conservation. There was some great news and then some not so great but easy to address news so getting the word out and hoping others here can also start spreading our next call to action to save our beautiful flying friends.
First, the good (actually amazing) news. The backyard milkweed movement has been a big success. People heard the call to action and began planting milkweeds. They reduced spraying insecticides in their lawns. This has been a huge success and numbers have been going up for summer eastern migrating monarchs. But, we lose a bunch of the monarch population in late fall, likely due to shifting patterns of plants flowering. Flowers that adults would nectar on in fall are blooming earlier, before monarchs arrive, and monarchs are having trouble finding food sources on their migration back . So here is the call to action and it’s easy! We need to get the word out about planting late season flowering plants. Asters, goldenrods (well behaved species), even zinnias can plug that hole.
To my fellow butterfly warriors, let’s spread the word and get to smelling the flowers! We have an army of people planting milkweeds, throwing in a few fall flowers is far easier to pull off!