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You’ve probably heard that the iconic migratory monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) was recently moved to the endangered “Red List” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This has been coming for a long time, due to loss of habitat (including milkweed, monarch caterpillars' only food source), climate change (which disrupts long-established migratory patterns), and broad-spectrum pesticide use. All season on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), we’ve been posting #MonarchMonday tips on how to help these lovely lepidopterans. We also have a new project, Mowing for Monarchs. Throughout the mid-Atlantic region, countless acres of public, industrial, and mixed use land lie fallow, waiting to be used “eventually.” Much of this land was initially planted with turfgrass, and is now a mixture of grass, invasive plants, and native wildflower “volunteers” where little else blooms. It’s usually mowed in high summer, when pollinators most need the native plants. We’re working to devise a more conservation-friendly maintenance schedule for such lands, optimizing across the needs of summer pollinators like monarchs, those of other beneficial insects who overwinter in hollow plant stems, and the demands of invasive plant control. Our laboratory is the Shenandoah County Landfill, which was also the site where we piloted the Making Trash Bloom project. The eventual “Mowing for Monarchs” plan will serve as a template for similar spaces, scaling its impact exponentially. The over 70 acres mowed annually by the Shenandoah Landfill possess a particularly strong seedbank of monarchs’ main host plant, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). This year, with our guidance, landfill staff have been mowing a test area in strips, at different timing intervals. The test area was surveyed during the Big Bug Bioblitz… though, don’t worry, monarchs were only counted, not ziploc’ed!
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