How to bring monarch butterflies back to suburbs: Plant milkweed
As far as conservation movements go, advocates for the monarch butterfly hope theirs is a relatively easy sell.
Schaumburg schoolteacher Kim Savino and the Schaumburg Park District are among the local leaders of an effort to plant more milkweed around the suburbs and across the country, something they say will re-establish habitats and boost the dwindling population of the beautiful orange-and-black butterfly.
“People don't understand why they don't see monarchs but also don't know what milkweed is,” Savino said.
Milkweed, in fact, is the only plant monarchs are interested in, and the only one on which they'll lay their eggs. In recent decades, this necessary plant has fallen prey not only to the unintended effects of new herbicides but also to focused efforts to remove it by people seeking a more manicured look for their lawns and gardens.
Monarch populations are measured in hectares when they gather by the tens of millions in central Mexico each winter. According to the University of Kansas-based Monarch Watch, the insects' population reached an all-time low of 0.67 hectare in the winter of 2013-14, down from a high of 20.97 in 1996-97. The yearly average in the decade between 2004 and 2014 was 3.51 hectares, a decline from the 6.39 hectares average during the previous decade.
Restoring milkweed to the environment is key to rehabilitating the monarch population. It's as simple as that, Savino said.
But for some, just seeing the word “weed” in its name has created an undeserved stigma for the plant, Savino said. She compares it to the change in fortune of the dandelion, whose early spring flowering is as important to the bumblebee.
Boosting the monarch butterfly population means more than just a return of their visual splendor. The butterfly also provides environmental benefits, among them maintaining the pollination cycle that keeps the interconnected ecosystem sustained.
In Schaumburg, the park district is doing its part by establishing monarch way stations at 15 of its sites, as well as providing the know-how and seeds for residents to create their own way stations.
Dave Brooks, manager of conservation services for the Schaumburg Park District, said every little bit people can do in their gardens contributes to the larger efforts of protected areas like those at the park district's Spring Valley Nature Center.
Savino, who lives in Roselle and teaches at Collins Elementary School in Schaumburg, created a local organization called Start Seeing Monarchs to supplement the efforts of the nationally focused Monarch Watch.
She even managed to create a new “national day” last year - Start Seeing Monarchs Day, the first Saturday of May. She aims to make it as universally observed as Earth Day.
In the meantime, Monarch Watch and its volunteers are aiming to have a billion new milkweeds planted nationwide. Creating monarch way stations certified by the organization is an important part of helping reach that goal, said Andre Copeland, interpretive programs manager at the Chicago Zoological Society, which operates the Brookfield Zoo.
The zoo is applying for a grant to help create a “pollinator corridor” along Interstate 55 all the way to the St. Louis Zoo, involving the cooperation of 24 public library districts along the route, he said.
Closer to home, Schaumburg resident Carol Johnson, wife of longtime park district Commissioner Dave Johnson, is spreading her knowledge of monarchs and milkweed through the Hoffman Estates Garden Club and local farmers' markets, and as a Master Gardener intern for the University of Illinois Extension.
Johnson said that while someone starting completely on their own might pay as much as $150 to create a monarch way station, many of the materials can be obtained free through garden clubs. Materials for tagging monarchs, which can help track their migration, also are available from Monarch Watch.
Monarchs' long annual migration makes them a rarity among insects. Monarchs from our area and most other parts of North America gravitate to a particular area of central Mexico, where 60 million to 1 billion monarchs cluster on trees like brown leaves that haven't fallen in winter, weighing down sturdy branches with their combined numbers.
Savino said the area they cover in Mexico recently expanded from four acres to 10 acres in just one year, an indication the population may be rebounding.
For both her and Copeland, this is a promising sign, but hardly one that the goal has been reached. “It's extremely encouraging,” Copeland said. “We're at least headed in the right direction. But you can't get complacent.”