For the love of monarchs
In April, Portland Monarchs founder Ida Galash posted on Facebook:
It’s up!
The Free Milkweed Seed Station is now in place and filled with seed packets, monarch gardening guides, and milkweed silk for natural hummingbird and chickadee nesting material. Bye bye plastic shoe box on the ground….
Galash founded Portland Monarchs in 2019 to support monarch butterflies struggling to survive. The group, already grown to 1200 strong, works to share information about the monarchs’ struggles and how to help.
The milkweed station at NE 24th between Fremont and Klickitat in Portland takes it a step further. Galash envisions creating a “Monarch Corridor of habitats, like a chain of islands in the vast sea, providing nectar and milkweed from the overwintering grounds up to and through their breeding grounds in Oregon, Washington and beyond.”
“No garden is too small,” Galash says. “Even a pot of zinnias on a balcony can provide a banquet for a traveling monarch, and a single healthy milkweed can host a new generation of butterflies.”’
Monarch butterflies are in steep decline due to pesticides, habitat loss and climate change. Recent population counts have fluctuated, going from 30,000 winter 2019-’20, before crashing below 2,000 winter 2020-’21. This year’s numbers bounced up to 200,000, which, while Galash notes is encouraging, “is still well below historic numbers in the hundreds of thousands, or even a million.”
“Having little pockets of milkweed interspersed will give monarchs more food availability, making it easier for them to find what they need without traveling great distances,” Galash says, adding that milkweed is the only plant the butterflies will lay eggs on. “So, if there is not milkweed, there’s no Monarchs.”
On the group’s Facebook page, a gentleman from Salem asked how he might obtain seeds. Galash promptly responded, “Private message me and I’ll see that you
get some.”
Galash says, “It’s great to be part of something people can get excited about and feel good about. And hopefully it’ll turn their thinking to other aspects of nature.”
Learn more at Portland Monarchs on Facebook or at SaveTheWesternMonarchs.com. A downloadable monarch gardening guide is available at 50plusmagazine.net.
“If you see a monarch, please, please snap a picture, and report your sighting to iNaturalist, Journey North, or Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper – and of course, let us know at Portland Monarchs!” — Ida Galash