CATAWBA LANDS CONSERVANCY & CAROLINA THREAD TRAIL
Winter 2015 NEWSLETTER
OF MONARCHS AND MILKWEED CLC AIMS TO HELP THE REGAL BUTTERFLY BOUNCE BACK FROM SEVERE DECLINES By PAGE LEGGETT This photo is courtesy of volunteer Laura Domingo, who shot it on location at Buffalo Creek Preserve on the day CLC volunteers helped restore monarch habitat.
The monarch butterfly is in trouble. And that means our ecosystem is in trouble. The distinctive orange and black butterfly isn’t on the endangered species list. Yet. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing a petition to have it added to the list. There’s a strong case for adding them; the monarch population in the United States has been reduced by 90 percent in the last 20 years. Every autumn, monarchs make one of nature’s most amazing journeys. Some travel up to 3,000 miles on their migration south to Mexico where they roost for the winter. The already arduous journey has been made harder because of deforestation, illegal logging, forest fires and other perils along the path. Some of the trouble was caused innocently. Sean Bloom, Catawba Lands Conservancy’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) director and biologist, said the use of pesticides in current U.S. agricultural practices is partially to blame for the butterfly’s decline. The pesticides are needed to kill weeds, but they also kill the thing that’s essential to monarchs: milkweed (which isn’t really a weed). While the adult monarch will take nectar from many plants, it’s picky about where it lays its eggs. Only milkweed will do. Pesticides aren’t all bad, Sean added. Even CLC uses them – sparingly. “Roundup isn’t itself a problem. The overuse of Roundup is. We’ve got to find a balance.” But America isn’t the only problem for monarchs. Their turf in Mexico has shriveled. It reached a peak of 52 acres in 1996-97 but by 2013 had dwindled to
just 1.7 acres, due mostly to logging. “People used to talk about seeing a darkening sky when the monarchs migrated,” Sean said. “There were that many of them. And tree limbs would break from the weight of the butterflies.”
Giving monarchs a chance
CLC recently beefed up the presence of milkweed at two of its preserves – Buffalo Creek in Mt. Pleasant and Seven Oaks in Belmont. The N.C. Botanical Garden propagated the plants and donated them to CLC thanks to funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. On Oct. 12 and 13, two groups of volunteers came out to plant. Escar Crisostomo, a UNC Charlotte junior majoring in biology, was among volunteers. The event aligned with what he’s studying, but even he didn’t know how dire the monarchs’ situation is. Volunteer Steve Goudy of Fort Mill, S.C., was likewise unaware of the monarchs’ plight. “People need to know how close the monarchs are to being on the endangered list,” he said. Tal Jacobs, another volunteer, is familiar with the monarchs’ predicament: “As an undergraduate, I led a student environmental group that [removed] invasive species on our campus trail. On one tract of land where we spent three years removing autumn olive and garlic mustard, a great surprise awaited on the third spring. Milkweed had grown back in the place of the invasives and was hosting monarch larvae.” Tal saw several monarchs while planting at Buffalo Creek, “Monarch butterflies, like all species, don’t
simply need habitat, but the right habitat,” he said. Volunteer Laura Domingo, a naturalist at Reedy Creek Nature Center, said, “Planting milkweed … is such a simple gesture with potentially huge impacts.”
HOW YOU CAN HELP There are over 100 species of milkweed. The most important thing you can do for monarchs is to plant the right kind of milkweed for your region.
THREE RECOMMENDED VARIETIES: Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
A favorite of monarchs and what CLC planted. It grows quickly so give it plenty of room in the garden. Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnate)
It blooms in early to mid-summer and prefers damp soil and full sun to partial shade. Orange Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Sometimes called butterfly weed (not to be confused with butterfly bush), orange milkweed requires full sun.
Learn more at catawbalands.org/monarchs Photos by Evan Raskin and Arleigh Birchler