THC is Expanding Monarch Habitat

Here are some of the sights from this year’s event!

We celebrated our annual public Monarch Event this year on Saturday, June 10th, and our partner’s event on June 12th with over 70 guests in attendance. We gave away over 150 narrow leaf and showy milkweed plants, which Greg Charpentier demonstrated how to plant. Everyone was greeted by THC staff, and shuttled to our Roberta Dewey Discovery Center (RDDC). There they experienced Gina Charpentier’s beautiful and interactive pollinator exhibit, with various other caterpillars and chrysalides on their host plants. Many species of milkweed were represented and she and her son Carter gave an educational experience about the needs of Monarchs and other pollinator species, and what they can do to help their conservation. Milkweed is the Monarch’s only host plant. After folks learned all about milkweed and Monarchs (and so much more), they grabbed some snacks and refreshments and hit the trails. We had a self-guided, interpretive trail set along a half-mile loop with signs and native plant information. The weather was perfect to view the beauty of the canyon.

A key change and highlight of this year’s event was a habitat continuation and mapping project. Our vision and goal is to not only give away free milkweed but to gather location information on where they will be planted. We will map all of this information using the Esri software Survey123 and Fieldmaps. Our goal is to see how big of an impact and how far the milkweed spread out from the RDDC. The goal is to create habitat pockets that the Monarchs can use as they breed and travel. We will also follow up on how the plants survived, and if the community saw any Monarch butterflies or other life stages at their milkweed. This project was provided almost completely by volunteer power. If you would like to fund projects like these, please visit our “Support” page today.