Monarch Butterfly in Danger

In a recent letter to the editor in the Boston Globe Jeffrey Collins, director at Mass Audubon, outlines how we can save the endangered monarch butterfly.

He recommends that we leave a section of the lawn go wild and plant milkweed or Asclepias, the essential food source for this butterfly.

Then he urges the reader to create a pollinator garden.

We also ought to avoid the use of pesticides in the garden.

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The International Union of Conservation of Nature’s addition of the migratory monarch butterfly to the Red List of Threatened Species^TM is further validation that this imperiled species is in desperate need of protection and recovery.

“There’s still so much to learn about monarch migration population dynamics to better understand how and why we are seeing these troubling statistics,” said Dr. Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñón, chief monarch recovery strategist for the National Wildlife Federation.

 “However, we know that habitat deterioration, together with extreme weather events, threatens the migratory monarch “

Even if only in a small way, we can help save the beautiful monarch butterfly.

All nature is connected.

Arabella Dane from the Native Plant Trust in Framington, Massachusetts urges gardeners to take a step in saving the monarch butterfly.

She says, “The action we take today has a direct impact on tomorrow.”

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James Vick, nineteenth century Rochester, New York seed company owner, wrote a garden column for young people in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly.

In 1880 he said, “The milkweed, on account of its prevalence almost everywhere we are all familiar with. There are many species of it, but none of the other kinds are so showy as the one commonly known as Butterfly Weed.”

Even back then gardeners recognized the Asclepias, our native flower, as important to the monarch butterfly.