The population of Monarch butterflies has dropped 59% this year. This is the lowest population ever recorded. Scientists attribute the drop to the destruction of breeding habitat in the U.S., due to commercial farming practices involving herbicides and genetically engineered crops.
What does this mean to you? Everything! If these native pollinators are dropping in record numbers, so are other pollinators. But there is something you can do about it. Make a small rest stop (or waystation) for the butterflies to help increase their numbers. This is a quite simple thing to do.
To create a habitat for monarchs, you need to provide milkweeds for the larvae, nectar plants for the adults, and sufficient vegetation to provide shelter for the larvae, pupae and adults. This all comes in a small kit for $16 here at Monarch Watch Stop.
How to Build a Monarch Waystation and lot’s of other useful links:
You can also purchase Milkweed seeds here for $3 a pack at Butterfly Encounters
Milkweed Growing Instructions: Live Monarch
From Here and Now on NPR a great radio piece with audio – Majestic Monarch Butterflies Under Threat
IMAX 3D Movie: Flight of the Butterflies
Teachers: Monarchs in the Classroom
I’ll be building a Monarch Garden this spring and I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.
Let’s help our little orange and black friends….before it’s too late. If you’ve created a garden already, please pot in comments and offer some advice to others. Spring’s almost here and I can’t wait! Happy planting!
Thanks for this important information. They’ve been in decline for a few years now.
In case you haven’t seen the science about herbicides and monarch butterflies, here it is http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-4598.2012.00196.x/abstract
I’m a research scientist and these authors have convinced me! I hope your monarch garden will be a great success.
We have plenty of native milkweed that grows along the ditch, but this year, I think we will allow some to border our veggie garden too.
interestingly enough my husband mentioned this to me just yesterday, in relation to the fact that our land has been free from agricultural/chemical residue, etc. for decades, and has been home to wild milkweed in abundance since we moved here 5 years ago . . . . .yet last year, zilch, hardly any milkweed grew to flowering stage.
it was very odd, for in the years we’ve been here you could smell the fragrance from the flowers up the 1/3 mile driveway to our house, that’s how much milkweed grew!!
what i found was that the milkweed ‘did’ grow, however it was eaten to 6″ from the ground before it got to flowering stage by a caterpillar i’d never seen before, pictured here:
http://creekrose.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/unknown-caterpillar/
a friend i.d’d it as a milkweed tussock caterpillar and we saw LOTS of them last year, so could be they’re where the milkweed went around these blue ridge’s of va. . . . . for it wasn’t limited to our land alone, but also the roadside milkweed around here was very very sparse.
I had those, too! along with hundreds of milkweed bugs that multiplied like crazy!
I have a registered Monarch Waystation here in central Virginia and more information can be accessed on my blog by typing “monarch” into the search bar there. Thanks for writing this important. Although I have raised over 1000 monarchs here over the past few years, it is never enough and we need to inspire others with gardens to do the same. Diane
Thanks so much for posting this. I will share widely. Our Memorial Garden butterfly bed included milkweed last year, and we were graced with the Monarch’s presence. I suspect that milkweed will now find its way into more of the beds at the garden – and at our homes 🙂
I absolutely and completely agree. We need more wild lands, and wild gardens. Milk weeds are on the NO DIG list here and in only a couple of years their numbers have grown fantastically and our butterflies are coming back. EVERYONE needs to plant more flowers, for the bees and the butterflies, people just don’t have flower gardens around here, mid west, they think mine is amazing but by NZ farm standards it is only beginning.. great post.. c
Thanks for posting about this and providing the wonderful links! All our pollinators are suffering. I wrote a post with some links to case studies back in 2010 (http://rcponders.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/bees-butterflies-birds-and-bats-the-fall-of-the-pollinators/). Although it is important to do what we can in our own gardens to insure food and breeding areas for these creatures, I also urge everyone to speak up against GM foods. If it isn’t healthy for the pollinators then it isn’t healthy for us! BTW–I read (in Mary Janes Farm) that Washington University reported an increase in herbicide usage in the past 16 years…on GM crops. How much? 527 million pounds of herbicide!
Great to see you back!! I’ll be working on several of these, one at home and one at work. thanks for the information!
Hi Dan! It is so nice to have you back in the blog world! We missed you! Great information in your post today! Thanks for sharing! We can’t wait for gardening season either!
Reblogged this on Adventures and Musings of a Hedgewitch.
Great post! I have been really concerned about the decline of Monarchs, and have three kinds of milkweed in the garden.
We built one a couple of years back and proudly display our sign on our farm. 🙂
HI there. I grew loads of monarch butterfly plants this summer (we call it Swan Plants in NZ) and so we had loads of butterflies gracefully floating about the place – it was lovely.
One piece of advice is make sure you have your plants far enough away from where you hang your sun dried washing or you’ll have to leave that favourite shirt on the line for a few weeks waiting for the butterfly to emerge from the chrysalis. The caterpillars seem to travel quite a few metres looking for the right spot!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Great post, thanks for sharing. Our yard is filled with plants that attract butterflies and humming birds, our grandchildren and guests love playing and sitting in the yard as butterflies flitter close to them. We have a stretch of soil that we haven’t yet planted so this year we are planning on working on that area and it will of course, including more host plants.
Thanks for doing that and for the info.
This is great information. I always let the milkweed grow right up to my garden fence; Beaver Island is a noted stop on their migration. During World War II, milkweed pods were collected to make floatation devises for our servicemen. That created a tremendous drop in the population at that time. It wasn’t until after that war that herbicides and pesticides became such a great threat. Thank you!
Most people don’t seem to understand how critical these insects are to our overall environment. Thanks for posting this!
The milkweed seeds I ordered just arrived this week! I can’t wait to plant them.
I am surprised that a fair amount of it grows in the parks within the local neighborhood parks around here in Plainfield,Illinois. I break the pods and set them free when the have matured.
I do not use herbicides or pesticides in my yard. But I know my wasteful, thoughtless neighbors do because I have seen them spraying and spreading the poison these past many summers.
EXCELLENT post and wonderful information. Thanks for sharing, we can all make a difference.
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Great post! I have had milkweed in my garden for years. I also used to tag them and tagged about 100 the first year but have noticed a similar decline. I might have tagged 25 last year. Sad. We just need to keep educating.
Reblogged this on The Urbanette's Farm.
Welcome back and thank you for the reminder that we can all do our part to maintain habitat for our natural friends
Thanks for reading my post. You have a beautiful farm and blog.
Great post. I just started some butterfly weed seeds this weekend. I am going to reboot and share this.
Reblog. Dumb autocorrect.
They love butterfly bushes. I get many monarcs visiting two butterfly bushes i have in the garden. I noticed many monarch wings scattered all over the dirt, and when I looked closely at the branches of the butterfly bush, I spotted a preying mantis, which I assume was the culprit. The next year, it happened again, and I looked for the preying mantis, and there it was. Let’s see what happens this year.
It is so sad that the butterfly population has decreased. My garden club brings awareness to people to plant the native milkweed that is needed for butterflies to lay their eggs.
Keep up the great information!
Karen
I make a conscious effort to mow around the milkweed stands in my pastures and leave them growing around the pond and driveway…and am rewarded with monarchs every year. They aren’t my favorite plants, but we need them around. We plant butterfly bushes, have a couple of butterfly/bee/hummingbird wild flower plots and are planning more this fall. Hopefully, if enough people make an effort, we won’t lose more butterflies, bees and other essential pollinators!
I was just seriously considering building a monarch waystation at our local park with a few of the neighborhood children. Thank you for the inspiration!
I actually just wrote about the bee population in crisis because of GMO crops.
My big concern with milkweed is that it’s toxic to horses and chickens/poultry, both of which we have……
Thanks for the reminder I need to plant milk weed. We live very near a Monarch fall stop over in California. It had a low count last year. I wonder will my garden help?
Thank you for this post…I’ll build a rest stop and spread the word!
Watched a TV program some while ago addressing this! Juts one of the many changes in nature! Thank you for sharing
Thanks for the good idea and useful information. Coupled with recent news about declining bee populations, the loss of butterflies is sad news for all of us.
You may be interested in the blog of another Monarch enthusiast (and avid gardener), Late Bloomer. A good place to start would be http://www.latebloomershow.com/2012/08/14/monarchs-and-milkweed-episode-16/.
I always let the milkweeds grown in my garden specifically for the monarchs and every year I have several monarch caterpillars eating them up. Last year I had none and I couldn’t figure out why. You got me thinking about toxins and I think I may have inadvertently killed the eggs. We had a serious spider problem and a solid wood house with carpenter ants and so have had our house sprayed by a pest control company for several years. The milkweeds are next to the house and we sprayed late last year, so that may have been the culprit. Thanks for stimulating my thought process, now I need to figure out how to solve my dilemma.
Great idea! Thanks for the resources.
Having just read Flight Behavior, I’m particularly happy to see this post and know you are doing what you can to take care of these beautiful creatures.
Thanks so much for sharing such great information and links! I am going to do what I can to help! I planted butterfly friendly plants and shrubs last spring, I’ll be sure to add milk weed this year! I saw over a dozen of these beauties last year in my yard! They are breath taking!
What a great post! We have so many butterfly friendly plants in our yard, that we usually have lots and lots of them…thankfully!
Reblogged this on The Herbitage and commented:
Check out this post from the Soulsby Farm blog. We should all be concerned about the declining population of butterflies – and of all pollinators in general.
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