no place like home
of pollinator species is lower in fragmented habitats, which might lead to lower fruit- and seed-setting in smaller habitats, limiting pollination. Habitat fragmentation is especially troublesome for monarch butterflies. The featherweight pollinators travel up to 100 miles per day during their annual migration from eastern North America to the Sierra Madre mountain range in Mexico or from western North America to California. During the arduous trek to their overwintering sites, the iconic black, orange, and white butterflies depend on roosting sites. Illegal logging in the Monarch Biosphere Reserve, the area in central Mexico where millions of migrating butterflies spend the winter, has led to deforestation that exposes monarchs to wind and cold temperatures, leading to their death. In a statement about the impact of deforestation on monarch populations, Chip Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, said, “It’s so truly spectacular, one of the most awe-inspiring phenomena that nature presents to us. There is no way to describe the sight of 25 million monarchs per acre—or the sensation of standing in a snowstorm of orange as the butterflies cascade off the fir trees. To lose something like this migration is to diminish all of us.” Patches of pollinator habitat aren’t just important for migrating butterflies; the plantings also provide places to feed and nest for the species that stick closer to home. Stitching together a patchwork of habitats was one of the goals of creating the North Carolina Butterfly Highway. With the bells from the light-rail crossing ringing in the background, Angel Hjarding, director of pollinator and wildlife habitat programs for the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, dressed in a gauzy butterfly-printed scarf, points out the pollinator plants at First Ward Park in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. When the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Parks and Recreation department established the four-acre park on the site of a former parking lot, the raised beds were filled with traditional landscape plants like fescue grass (Festuca), Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) and bush clover (Lespedeza bicolor) that, while popular,
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