Wisconsin monarchs looking for milkweed to lay their eggs on will now find hundreds of thousands of more acres of habitat in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Monarch Collaborative formed in 2018 to voluntarily plant milkweed and wildflowers on a massive scale. The collaborative’s efforts are essential to help reverse an 80 percent decline over the last 20 years in the Eastern population of monarchs that breed and migrate through Wisconsin and 15 other states.
Collaborative members committed to voluntarily adding 120 million new stems of milkweed, along with other native wildflowers, as Wisconsin’s contribution to a larger regional strategy. Participants in the Wisconsin Monarch Collaborative include DNR representatives and other state and federal agencies, utilities, transportation groups, agriculture groups, university researchers, conservation groups and nature centers.
“Wisconsin Monarch Collaborative partners have made a solid initial down payment on our statewide goal,” says Brenna Jones, DNR conservation biologist and Wisconsin Monarch Collaborative coordinator.
The group advises that adding and maintaining habitat is an important factor in reversing monarchs’ decline. The group encourages planting and maintaining native milkweed and native wildflowers. Milkweeds are the only source of food monarch caterpillars will eat and adult monarchs feed on a wide variety of native wildflowers.
“Wisconsin Monarch Collaborative members expect that the pace of milkweeds and nectar plants added to Wisconsin’s landscape will pick up,” Jones says. “There is an unprecedented level of attention and funding now going to monarch and other pollinator habitats both nationally and in Wisconsin. Governments, nonprofits and individuals are all focusing on the task.”
Andrew Wallendal, co-leader of the collaborative’s agricultural working group, says many farmers are growing much-needed products and providing ecosystem services of pollinator habitats.
“These growers are unsung heroes that need to be recognized,” Wallendal says.
Dan Meyer, a Wisconsin Farm Bureau member and dairy farmer from Kiel planning his first monarch habitat, says that pollinator habitats can be a win-win for the environment and a farmer’s pocketbook.
“On our farm, we accomplish this by planting cover crops on environmentally sensitive and lower-yielding acres,” Meyer says. “This is one practice we can use to help expand diversity. Oftentimes, farmers can accomplish this in a low cost, low-risk way by utilizing current cost-share funding.”
See how to create habitat on farms, rights-of-ways, urban areas and protected lands: https://wiatri.net/Projects/Monarchs/habitat.cfm
Report monarch habitat created in recent years to count toward Wisconsin’s tally: https://wiatri.net/Projects/Monarchs/report.cfm
Leave a Reply