36 | OHCC LIVING | MARCH 2023 |
Save The Monarch Butterfly
We enter a new year with wonderful news from the Butterfly World.
The Western Monarch population in California has experienced a
generous rebound. The latest count during November and December
discovered 330,000 Monarchs at their wintering sights, the second
consecutive year of encouraging growth. However, their population
remains far below the 4.5 million there were in 1980, so the work of
supporting them must go on.
The SMB Club's first project for the year is to help grow our
Monarch population with the help of homeowners. Creating the
Sanctuary was a great beginning, with hundreds of Monarchs
emerging in its first year. We are fully expecting a much larger
population this year, because Monarchs have memory and return to
their reproductive sites to begin the next cycle. That poses a bit of a
dilemma for us, as the Sanctuary can only feed so many, and without
more milkweed, the caterpillars will have no food. Expanding the
number of home gardens with milkweed and nectar plants will help
solve that problem.
We started our project with a seminar on Feb. 23, with speakers
demonstrating how to plant and care for milkweed and their visitors,
and how to effectively use cages to protect them from predators. We
have written a step-by-step "Guide for Butterfly Lovers" that was
given to attendees. Additional seminars will be held throughout the
year.
We also had the pleasure of working with the OHCC Landscape
Committee and sharing a palette of native plants that Robin Genat,
one of our Board members, created for our residents. They will
be using these plants to further expand friendly butterfly habitat
throughout OHCC.
