TH UR SDA Y , S E P T E M B E R 29, 20 16
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A rest stop for butterflies ‘Monarch waystation’ created at Oswego Presbyterian Church By ALLISON SELK news@kendallcountynow.com Less than two years ago, Oswego Presbyterian Church developed an Earth Care Team to fulfill the call to restore the creation in which man had destroyed. The past spring, the team’s leader, Ken Mozingo, wanted to take this team a step further in this restoration mindset and create a Monarch waystation on the church property. It so happened that around this exact same time, church member and Boy Scout Jacob Brummel approached the church board for guidance in an Eagle Scout project. The two groups came together and as of July 2016, the church has its own Monarch Watch Organization certified Monarch waystation. “I felt like this was important because the Monarch butterfly is the state insect of Illinois and I wanted to help it not be on the endangered list, but out flying around,” 15-year-old Brummel said. Mozingo said after he retired, he became a volunteer with the Kendall County Forest Preserve and learned about seed collection and distribution and worked as a trail monitor. Three years ago he took a class about Monarch butterflies at the Will County Forest Preserve, which led him to brainstorm the idea of a conservation project, which led to the waystation. Monarch butterflies will only lay eggs on varieties of milkweed plants, so these plants are crucial for the lifecycle of the Monarch. Just as important, are nectar plants to provide the necessary food for the adults who are in the process of laying eggs and migration. Monarch waystations are a combination of both types of
plants to create a habitat for reproduction and sustainability. This Monarch Watch-certified waystation garden is one of four in the state of Illinois, and Mozingo said it has become imperative that people create waystations, whether big or small, in order to bring back the declining Monarch butterfly population. Monarch Watch is an organization out of the University of Kansas that aids educating people about and monitoring Monarch butterflies. The Monarchwatch. org website said there are several factors that have led to the decline of Monarch butterfly populations. The site states that development in the United States has consumed habitats for Monarchs and other wildlife at a rate of 6,000 acres per day – which rounds out to 2.2 million acres each year. Also, genetically modified crops and adoption of herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans have resulted in a loss of 80 million acres of Monarch habitat. Mozingo said another decline in milkweed plants was that historically people thought of milkweed as just that, a weed, so the plants were pulled out or killed by chemicals, thus killing the Monarch habitat. Mozingo said the first thing needed in order to create a Monarch waystation was to understand the migration patterns of the butterfly. He said the group of Monarchs who migrated to Mexico in the winter breed in mid-March. Then, that first generation that was born in Mexico migrates to Texas in early spring and lays eggs. Then the older butterflies die, and the second generation migrates to Illinois to lay eggs, and the older
See MONARCHS, page 6
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Ken Mozingo, Earth Care Team leader at Oswego Presbyterian Church, came up with the idea to create a “way station” for migrating Monarch butterflies. “Our viewpoint was to promote native plants, so we came up with ground rules for our garden, we wanted to make sure even our milkweed seeds came from this area,” he said.