'Monarch Magic' enchants library crowd
Preserving pollinating insects a top priority for human existence
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Monarch butterflies are beautiful creatures. The sight of them brings joy to people. But they are disappearing at an alarming rate. And once they are gone, humans will be quick to follow.
The Kokomo Howard County Public Library hosted a “Monarch Magic” event last week, where professionals explained the need for butterflies and other pollinating insects, and the small things people can do to ensure the monarchs survive.
“It takes a community,” said Valerie Gordon, a self-taught pollinator advocate and monarch butterfly tender. “I might not be able to do a lot, but I can still talk and I can still share. Maybe we don't have a lot of time, or maybe we feel we can't do anything. But every person can do something, even if it's to put milkweed in the ground. So, it's going to take a whole community of us working together to save these butterflies and our other pollinators.”
Gordon provided a simple way people can encourage and foster the pollinator population, particularly the monarch butterflies. It’s as easy as planting a few milkweeds. The plant grows tall and eventually produces bright pink flowers that butterflies love. And the leaves of the milkweed are perfect for laying eggs and producing the next generation of butterflies.
But not just any milkweed will do. It is considered a nuisance plant by many, and it is commonly sprayed with herbicides and pesticides or mowed over. Transplanting milkweed from a roadside ditch might spell disaster for an individual’s butterfly garden.
“If you're wanting to raise a monarch, you cannot gather milkweed from the roadsides because most likely it's been sprayed,” said Gordon. “if you bring that back and feed any caterpillars in your area, they're going to die because it's chemically poisoned. In order to have a true source of milkweed, you've got to grow it yourself.”
Gordon said that there are milkweed farmers in Indiana who sell seeds for pollinator gardens. Organic farmers might also allow butterfly enthusiasts to harvest butterfly eggs and caterpillars along with milkweed.
The monarch eggs look like little white specks on the leaves of a plant. Within a couple days, the egg matures, and a caterpillar emerges. And it begins to eat everything. The leaf that once housed the egg is now the caterpillar’s meal.
Once the caterpillar matures, it climbs to a high point in its environment and begins the process of becoming a butterfly.
“They'll form a ‘J’ shape,” said Gordon. “And then they turn themselves kind of inside out, forming the chrysalis, and then the chrysalis hardens.”
The chrysalis starts out green, with yellow dots encircling the cocoon. As it develops, the chrysalis becomes transparent, and the new monarch emerges. At first the butterfly is weak; its wings are crumpled and folded and cannot fly. Given a few minutes, the wings eventually unfurl and become functional.
But the challenge of surviving is just beginning, according to Marian Cable, president of the Howard County Master Gardeners Association. Food sources are vital. The nectar from many different plants and flowers can serve as a food source, though the butterflies prefer milkweed, she explained. Water sources are equally important. A monarch needs damp ground – not a pond or large body of water – from which to drink.
If food and water are scarce, there are ways a person raising monarchs can nourish them, Gordon noted.
“You can put honey and warm water in the cap of a pill bottle,” said Gordon. “You can set the monarchs next to it and then take a toothpick and roll out the butterfly’s proboscis so that it touches the honey water. They will drink.”
The monarchs also need flat, open spaces where they can rest as they journey, and sheltered areas, like tall grasses or plants, where they can hide from predators or the elements.
Pesticides are a serious risk for the monarchs. Any plant that has been treated chemically can be deadly. The monarchs are also susceptible to a particular parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), which spreads from infected milkweed to the caterpillar or adult monarch.
“It's a debilitating protozoan parasite,” said Gordon. “The adult monarchs harvest thousands or millions of these microscopic oily spores on the outsides of their body. The monarch lands on a milkweed and spreads that spore. The next monarch comes to the plant, and it picks up that spore. That’s how it spreads within the monarch population and kills them.”
Human intervention can increase the monarchs’ chances of survival. The OE spores can be detected and removed. Providing safe food sources in a community can establish a “pollinator pathway” that aid the monarchs during their annual migrations.
The ‘pollinator pathway’ is of particular interest to Megan Malott, executive director of the Fulton County Soil and Water Conservation District. Malott recently attended a Clean Water Indiana (CWI) conference where she learned that the state legislature approved $6 million in each of the next two years for ecological projects.
CWI provides local matching funds and grants for sediment and nutrient reduction projects. And it provides matching funds for the Indiana Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, pairing with federal funds to encourage landowners to conserve environmentally sensitive land.
“Each county has a Soil and Water Conservation District,” said Malott. “They each have a need, and they have opportunities to partner with Master Gardeners and the community. I'm doing a pollinator habitat in Fulton County. If that's something you guys have interest in, reach out to your soil and water district. We want partnerships. We want collaboration.”
A pollinator pathway involves people in communities across the state planting milkweed and other plants that pollinators like monarch butterflies thrive upon. As the monarchs migrate, they follow the food sources.
“You plant a few plants; you don't have to take your whole yard or garden,” said Gordon. “If you want to make it bigger, make it big. That will help tremendously.”
The pathway is important. Monarch butterflies migrate extensively. Each winter, they travel to Mexico, and each spring, they return to places all across the U.S. As long as there are good places for the butterflies to shelter, feed, and rest, they will continue this pattern, pollinating every plant they touch as they go. A “pathway” of food sources ensures the migration will continue.
“The butterfly you see here is going to fly to Mexico,” said Gordon. “They go through the winter there, and in February and March, they start the journey back. But the butterfly you see in the fall isn’t the butterfly you’ll see the next spring.
“They are going to stopover in different locations, and the females are going to lay eggs. Their life is gone at that point. The next butterfly will continue the journey and fly farther north. It takes five generations of monarchs to make it back here before they fly south again. It's a miraculous thing that the fifth generation knows where they're going.”
But without a pollinator habitat, that journey ends. Pesticides and predators eliminate food sources and thin the monarch population. When the monarch butterfly stops migrating, pollination stops.
“They're pollinating from plant to plant as they feed,” said Gordon. “Every flower, every tree, everything. It's pretty serious when we start losing our pollinators. Because if we don't have pollinators, we don't have food. We don't have a human race.
“It may seem like we're at the very ground level of, ‘Oh, what does a butterfly matter?’ Well, it's not just the butterfly; it's the bees. It's all of our pollinators we're losing. If you see a green grass yard and it's all mowed and looks lovely and pristine, it's also a dead zone. There are no flowers there. There's no food for anything to survive.”
Gordon explained that helping foster monarch growth is more important than ever. As humans continue to deforest land and develop it, the butterflies lose their habitats. The monarch population, globally, is reaching a tipping point. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering adding the insect to the endangered species list.
“Once they go on the endangered list, we are not going to be able to raise them, to explore them,” said Gordon. “We're going to have to just let nature take care of them if that happe
ns. But we still have time to learn.”
For additional information about pollinators, monarch butterflies, and the efforts locally to sustain them, visit the Howard County Master Gardener Association Facebook page.