[Pollinator] Pacific Grove: It's time for the monarch count

Tue Nov 22 10:00:41 PST 2016

Please know that the planting of tropical milkweed is not welcome in the central United States either!
The common milkweed, Aesclepias syriaca is the mainstay for monarchs in the central flyway.
Our concern is the planting of the tropical milkweed will lead to an invasive plant problem and also not be a healthy food source for monarch larva.
Related milkweeds that are native to the central migratory route include: butterflyweed, whorled milkweed, and swamp milkweed.

Bonnie L. Harper-Lore

> On Nov 22, 2016, at 9:33 AM, Matthew Shepherd <matthew.shepherd at xerces.org> wrote:
> 
> FROM: Monterey Herald
> http://www.montereyherald.com/environment-and-nature/20161121/pacific-grove-its-time-for-the-monarch-count <http://www.montereyherald.com/environment-and-nature/20161121/pacific-grove-its-time-for-the-monarch-count>
>  
> Pacific Grove: It’s time for the monarch count
> By Sukee Bennett
>  
> Pacific Grove >> With deep concentration, they direct their gaze up the trees that play host to slumbering butterflies, silently counting the orange insects until they share their tally with neighboring volunteers.
>  
> As monarchs flock to the verdant groves along the Central Coast this time of year, so do the volunteers and scientists, some of whom have been counting them religiously for 20 years.
>  
> The Xerces Society Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, which is the oldest and most robust assessment of wintering monarch in California, started Nov. 12 and runs through Dec. 4. It’s one of the many ways the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group, works together with government agencies like U.S. Fish and Wildlife, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, farmers and citizens to study and protect the charismatic monarch butterfly, which has faced substantial declines in the past two decades.
>  
> “Monarchs are kind of the pandas of the insect world,” said Emma Pelton, a conservation biologist at Xerces. “We have a lot of beautiful butterflies here in America, but (the monarchs are) bigger and brighter.”
>  
> Pelton, who has been interested in interactions between agriculture and wildlife for as long as she can remember, has been at Xerces for a little over a year — just long enough to participate in last fall’s annual monarch count. But scientists have been counting California’s wintering monarchs since 1997, when biologists Dennis Frey, David Marriott and Mia Monroe realized the species was declining.
>  
> Both longstanding and first-year volunteers spend four weeks, centralized around Thanksgiving, scouring sites where monarchs are known to converge, including the Monarch Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Del Monte Avenue in Monterey, the Moss Landing Middle School, the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, and Moran Lake and Manresa State Beach in Santa Cruz, and Pismo Beach. Volunteers count individual butterflies, pooling their results with other volunteers to form an average.
>  
> “It’s a little bit of a guessing game, but that’s why we like to have experienced counters mentor new counters,” Pelton said.
>  
> They also assess the habitat, taking note of which trees appear most popular to butterflies and the availability of nectar-producing plants in the area.
>  
> This year, Bill Henry, director of Groundswell Coastal Ecology, a Santa Cruz-based organization that works on coastal advancements through education and community-based work, is partnering with Xerces. Together, they’re developing a management plan for the monarch grounds at the Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Henry will also count the butterflies in northern Santa Cruz with Samantha Marcum, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife monarch butterfly coordinator.
>  
> Marcum, who is volunteering with Xerces for the first time, said, “Working with the Xerces Society is a really positive experience. They’re really good at bringing people together to preserve monarchs.”
>  
> And Henry believes Xerces and its partners have been fundamental in gathering data needed to make well-informed decisions about preserving monarchs, whose populations have declined 74 percent in the last 20 years in California, according to Xerces scientists.
>  
> “The length of the data is starting to get longer, and so you’re able to learn more about some of these patterns,” Henry said.
>  
> But counting western monarchs in their winter habitat doesn’t tell the whole tale of their decline. To find out more, Xerces and U.S. Fish and Wildlife have just begun exploring where milkweed grows and where western monarchs breed.
>  
> “Those are some areas where we’re lacking information,” said Marcum.
>  
> Scientists already know that monarchs aren’t solely slumbering on the Central Coast; they’re now breeding here, too.
>  
> “Year-round breeding is really new,” said Pelton, adding that the phenomenon was most likely spurred by climate change and people planting tropical milkweed.
>  
> Monarchs are lighter sleepers than other hibernators like bears; they already move around in the winter months. And warmer winter temperatures, associated with climate change, may be putting them in the mood early.
>  
> Tropical milkweed, which locals sometimes plant in an effort to help monarchs, may provide habitat and sustenance for growing caterpillars. But there are problems. Tropical milkweed isn’t native to the Central Coast. And, as its name suggests, it grows like a weed.
>  
> “We don’t advocate people planting milkweed close to the coast,” Pelton said, adding that cultivating native pollinator species is a much better option.
>  
> People can plant tropical milkweed with some success in the Midwest, where many eastern monarchs grow up. But California winters are too warm for the milkweed to ever die back. The plants end up carrying diseases that spread to the infantile insects eating them.
>  
> Western monarchs raised on tropical milkweed usually have high disease loads, Pelton said. And they can transmit those diseases to healthy monarchs.
>  
> But, despite the many threats they face, there’s a silver lining for monarchs. Now, more than ever, communities are coming together to help the species. The Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count is but one example.
>  
>  
>  
> ----------
>  
> Matthew Shepherd
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