Fresno has no butterflies.
Butterfly season is here! Many people are heading over to the butterfly sanctuary in Pacific Grove to see the beautiful creatures.
“It’s so beautiful and peaceful and just looking up to see the butterflies,” said Maggie Sloan, visiting from Fresno.
Now people are encouraging others to peep into what the butterflies are doing and send paparazzi pics.
The challenge seeks to fill a “data gap” in recorded sightings during March, April and May when monarchs are passing unseen between breeding sites.
Those looking to participate in the challenge can submit photos through the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper project on iNaturalist — a crowdsourcing naturalist app jointly sponsored by the California Academy of Science and National Geographic — or by emailing them to MonarchMystery@wsu.edu.
Awwww – congresscirtter wants to help the butterflies.
The Monarch Action, Recovery, and Conservation of Habitat (MONARCH) Act, introduced during last week’s session of Congress, would establish a western monarch butterfly rescue fund of $62.5 million released over five years. Funded projects would fill in information gaps and focus on the restoration of sensitive overwintering and breeding habitat to guard against future extinction.
Ohhhhh – by spending tax dollars for more government consultants.
When asked what the city of Pacific Grove might do with a portion of the proposed funds, Public Works management analyst Caleb Schneider said the city would be keen to hire additional consultants to assess their current conservation efforts and to invest in infrastructure such as irrigation for the sanctuary.
Maybe the butterflies hate the tourists too. I certainly avoid places where they gather.
Roughly 30 people — sanctuary docents, volunteers and interested members of the public — gathered in the sanctuary Thursday morning to listen to Stuart Weiss, the chief scientist contracted by the city to develop long-term planning for the 2.5-acre site. Weiss described what goals he and the city want to accomplish to help monarchs, including dealing with tree species, microclimates and the plants monarchs rely on for nectar.
Ahhh politics. Here’s a the work of one that looks good
Assemblymember Mark Stone — whose district includes Pacific Grove’s Monarch Sanctuary — is pushing a bill, AB 2421, to protect the iconic black and orange insects. “As monarch butterfly populations decline, ecosystems across our state are at risk of collapse,” said Stone, who introduced the bill in February. “This measure provides grants and support to preserve and restore monarch and other pollinator habitats.
Then we see what it really is. Looks like another tax and spend project.
The bill would establish the Monarch and Pollinator Rescue Program, which would be overseen by the California Wildlife Conservation Board. The program would offer grants to farmers, ranchers, nonprofits and public agencies to pay for habitat restoration projects throughout the state.
Probably birds. Wouldn’t it be odd if it was hawks brought in to control sea gulls finding the town’s symbol more tasty than gulls.
The butterflies are often found clinging to life — their abdomen removed with seemingly surgical precision.
“Their abdomen is just severed clean off, like you took it off with a scalpel,” says Stong, who is also the regional coordinator for the Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count.
Connie Masotti, a docent at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, has also found several of the gutless butterflies. Based on their observations, Masotti suspects that the predation happens just before sunrise, since the butterflies are still alive when the docents get to their stations in the early morning.
Don’t chop them down.
It’s the past management mishaps combined with a declining monarch population that has city officials more cognizant about how the sanctuary is currently managed. In 2009, some overly-trimmed trees were thought to cause the demise of some of the monarchs. That sparked debate and instigated a re-do of the monarch sanctuary management plan that was developed in the 1990s. Weiss was later instrumental in the process of planting a second row of eucalyptus trees along the sanctuary’s southern boundary with the theory that redundancy creates a safeguard.
Overall, he said the city is taking a conservative approach when it comes to the sanctuary’s maintenance this year, which will only include the removal of a couple of dead trees, which will be replaced with pine and cypress.
“Past mishaps”
Fish & Wildlife to grant money for restoration and improvements.
“We walk around and talk about the state of the sanctuary and what the activities are that we have decided are good for the grove,” said Weiss. “The idea is that we want to be open and transparent about why we recommend doing certain things to keep every one on the same page about what’s happening in the grove.”
That transparency is so important to Weiss and city officials because of the past mishaps that have occurred with the city’s management of the sanctuary.
What is it Ann? If it’s an over wintering site why plant milkweed for the caterpillars? Should plant nectar bearing flowers for the butterflies I think
“There’s volunteers all along the west coast, primarily in California that are counting over wintering sites during the three weeks around thanksgiving,” said Pacific Grove Museum Director of Education Ann Wasser.
“They’re looking at different pesticides, they’re looking at habitat loss with milk weed which is what the monarchs use to lay their eggs on. A lot of people treat it as a weed so they pull it,” said Wasser.
Maybe the cost of housing is keeping them away.
Volunteers and officials with the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History recently counted 11,000, down from 18,000 this time last year. That count seems to buck a coastal trend, although not all the counts are in.
Sarina Jepsen, the director of the Xerces Society’s endangered species program, said that from the 145 sites counted so far, the monarch count actually seems to be up from last year. Jepsen’s program aims to raise awareness about the plight of invertebrates that are declining.