40 | OHCC LIVING | APRIL 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.
