The Butterfly Effect: Making Butterfly Magic

Jump into the enchanting world of monarch butterflies—nature's neon nomads! In this episode, Professor Emilie Snell-Rood from University of Minnesota explores the captivating and fragile world of monarch butterflies.

Tackling the critical challenges posed by climate change, drought, and pesticides, Emilie shares her deep expertise, personal stories, and actionable tips, showing us how to transform our gardens into thriving sanctuaries for these majestic pollinators.
Discover how small actions can create ripple effects in preserving biodiversity, as she shares fascinating insights on everything from milkweed magic to the surprising benefits of "messy" yards. With equal parts scientific expertise and contagious passion, this episode is a must-listen! 

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Chapters

• 0:06 Monarch Butterfly Conservation and Climate Change
• 5:25 Impact of Climate Change on Monarchs
• 20:25 Impact of Residential Pesticides on Monarchs
• 24:38 Creating Monarch-Friendly Gardens and Habits
• 32:30 Promoting Wildlife Coexistence and Conservation

Transcript

Pat
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat
Hi, I am Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Today, episode number 80, "The Butterfly Effect, Making Monarch Magic." My guest, Emily Snell-Rood, is a University of Minnesota professor in the College of Biological Sciences. Professor Snell-Rood studies monarch butterflies and other pollinators. 

Her work caught my eye when I read a compelling MPR, Minnesota Public Radio news article about monarch butterflies and the effect climate change has on plants that sustain them.  Her insights on this crucial topic really stood out to me. That's why I couldn't wait to invite her to come on Fill To Capacity and share her expertise with us. And she'll also give us some practical tips on what we can do with our lawns and gardens to attract and support monarchs. So welcome Professor Emily Snell-Rood.

Emilie
Thank you so much, Pat, for having me.

Pat 
Well, Emily, I'd like to start with what sparked your passion for monarch butterflies and pollinator conservation? Was there a moment or an experience that inspired you to say, oh my gosh, this is what I wanna do the rest of my life?

Emilie
That's a good question. I think it actually started with birds, though, not butterflies. I don't know how far back you wanna go, but when I was a kid, I was fascinated with birds and started watching birds in my backyard and got really drawn into them and watching them and taking notes on them and, and when I was in my twenties, I realized,  back in elementary school, I really wanted to become an ornithologist and was set on that path and did research on birds and as an undergrad. And then in my twenties when I was in grad school, I learned that actually working on birds is really hard. So at that point I, I switched to butterflies and studying butterflies is much easier than studying birds. It's easier to catch them and hold them and mark them and raised them, but many of the same things apply to them to birds and butterflies when you're thinking about conservation issues.

Emilie
And so I switched to studying butterflies in 2003 and I still love birds, but I kind of fell in love with butterflies then, and insects in general. And I started with cabbage whites, which most people think are kind of a boring garden pest butterfly, those little white butterflies that fly around. But I love them. I think they're adorable. They're really easy to raise. We raise 'em on an artificial diet and you can manipulate the diet. And so they're very easy to raise. 

And  I didn't start working on monarchs until I moved to Minnesota in 2011 and I quickly learned that people care a lot more about monarchs than they care about cabbage whites. And so monarchs are amazing butterflies and...they capture people's imagination in a way that no other insect does. And so in my research, I would say are kind of two butterfly workhorses for research are cabbage whites and monarchs. Those are the ones that we rear the most often.

Pat 
Well, in that Minnesota Public Radio news article you said: “a year's long drought pattern, winter whiplash and warming temperatures are all hurting monarchs and the plants they need to survive.” Will you say more about this?

Emilie 
Yeah, for sure. Probably the biggest issue are things that affect anything that affect the plants that butterflies, that the monarchs are laying eggs on, on milkweeds on their host plant. 

And so last year we had a pretty big drought. We had a drought in Minnesota in 2020 as well. And both of those droughts, which were broader than just Minnesota, did have an effect on the overwintering population of monarchs. Fortunately, the milkweeds, these host plants are perennials. They have really long tap roots. So generally they're hot, if it's a really dry summer, the plants might dry up early, but it usually doesn't kill 'em entirely. So they'll come back the next year. And so the populations can have a chance to rebound the next year as long as there's not drought after drought after drought. Fortunately this summer it's been really raining.

Pat 
We've had monsoons.

Emilie 
Yeah, I know. So that's been really good for the plants and resultingly, the butterflies have rebounded somewhat, their wintering numbers for monarchs were low, were the lowest they've been, I think in 15 years. That’s in part because of the drought last year. So to go back to your original question, probably the biggest concern is drought and how that relates to the milkweed host plants. Temperatures can also be an issue in terms of temperature stress. If it gets really too hot, that can affect both the plant and the butterflies. But again, butterflies have a lot of coping mechanisms, to dealing with temperature stress, especially in Minnesota where we have a lot of shade. 

Caterpillars move around, they will seek out micro habitats that are cooler if it gets too hot, especially if you have a lot of sort of patches of shade in a garden. And so as long as it's not getting over a hundred degrees over and over again, they can cope with those.

Pat 
Oh, I'm curious, you're bringing up an important point. We had two sustained droughts and then we had a winter that was very, very warm. It's almost sacrilegious in Minnesota to have a warm winter. We're a place where minus 20 windchill is just something that Minnesotans take pride in. We've had this really warm winter and now since April, we have had nothing but constant rain. So the weather seems to be whip sawing back and forth with different extremes. How does the monarch cope with this?

Emilie
Yeah, that's a great question. Overall, the good news is weather varies quite a bit in general and a lot of organisms have evolved ways to deal with that variability. Climate change is making things more variable as we know and we've heard a lot about in the news. And so hopefully they can keep up with that. 

But in terms of, to speak to some of the questions that you just asked, so about our warm winter for example, that directly doesn't necessarily affect the monarchs 'cause they don't overwinter here, so they're overwintering in Mexico. And so the main effect that a warm winter would have on our breeding population of monarchs in Minnesota would be indirect if it affects for example, the plants. 

So it's possible that if having less snow cover results in maybe fewer plants surviving or less seed establishment, I have no idea if that's true. But if it did, then that could have an effect on monarchs. If it had an effect, if the warmer temperatures, maybe didn't kill as many predators, then that could also have an effect on monarchs. Again, I don't know if that's true, but that those would be hypotheses that I would come up with maybe for how the warm winter could affect them. But in general, I think it would not affect them as long as the plants, as long as the milkweed is coming back.

Pat 
Okay. So I have to ask you, when you say monarch predators, what would be a predator for monarchs?

Emilie 
Yeah, so you've probably heard about how monarchs have this bright flashy color, these bright flashy colors that signal to possible predators that they taste horrible. And indeed if a bird eats them then they will throw up and you ate a monarchy would get sick as well. But those toxins are specific to vertebrates, so they're generally pretty well chemically defended against mammals and birds and reptiles, but not invertebrates. So most monarch caterpillars, their main predators that they're dealing with are invertebrates. So spiders, there are a lot of these piercing bugs that will like stink bug relatives that will stab the caterpillars and suck their juices out. There are lots of invertebrates on the monarch caterpillars. There are wasps that will eat them. There are wasps that will parasitize their eggs and pupa that will lay eggs in the pupa and then eat the developing pupa and then come out as these itty-bitty little wasps.

Emilie 
So there are lots of bugs that eat monarchs. And probably the mortality of caterpillars is, it's been estimated around 80 to 90% of caterpillars die. And the caterpillars died don't, even make it to adulthood because of predation. So if there are any of these weather effects that might affect predator, then that could have a downstream effect on the monarchs. And there's been some speculation that that might have been true. Actually the drought in the southern part of their range, like in Texas, might have knocked back some predators last year, such that early on in this season, a whole bunch of butterflies in the southern part of the US experienced what is sometimes called “predator release.” Like a lot of their predators weren't there. So I don't know if you've noticed any of the red admirals around this summer, these little black and orange butterflies.

Emilie 
We've just had a massive explosion of them. So they're one species of a handful that have had an explosion, an invasion because of abnormally large numbers of them in the southern part of their range, like in Texas. And one reason why that might be is because they have fewer predators this year because of the drought last year. And so it actually resulted in them exploding this year. So it's possible that that's happening. That could apply to monarchs as well, except their numbers are down this year. So population biology is really hard 'cause there's so many interacting factors.

Pat
So many variables.

Emilie
Yeah, there's so many variables. 

Pat 
Now anytime someone says monarch butterfly, we hear milkweed, it's like they go hand in hand. What is it about milkweed that is so important to the monarch?

Emilie 
Yes, very true. So, monarchs, the caterpillars feed on milkweed, so milkweed and that whole group, the genus is Asclepias. And then a couple other species of plants are the host plants for monarchs. So those are the plants that the caterpillars feed on. And most butterflies, and actually most plant feeding insects have just a narrow group of plant that we talk about as their host for the larva for the caterpillars. And that's because plants, from an evolutionary perspective, a plant doesn't wanna be eaten. They've evolved defenses, they've evolved chemicals to kill things that feed on them or spines or whatever to deter herbivores. And it's almost like an arms race where the caterpillar then evolved ways to detoxify those chemicals. And so, what that means is you have this interaction over long periods of time between the plant and the thing feeding on it.

Emilie 
And that means that the herbivore is usually pretty specialized. They can usually only feed on a range of things. So monarchs really can only feed on milkweed. If you put them on a cabbage plant, they'll die because a cabbage plant has a different toxin that will kill a monarch but doesn't kill a cabbage white because the cabbage white has adapted to cabbage with and those toxins. But if you put the cabbage white on a milkweed, they'll die. Okay. So they, they have defenses that are specific to those plants. So different butterflies feed on different plants. So like vicey (?) feed on willow cabbage, whites feed on mustard, those sulfur feed on legumes. So different species are all feeding on different host plants and caterpillars, but the adults are just nectaring, they're just getting carbohydrate sugar from nectar. And for most species of butterflies they will nectar on lots of different plant families. So they're the range of plants they feed on for nectars much broader than the range of plants they feed on as caterpillars.

Pat 
Okay. I wanna go back to the warm winters, sort of a timing mismatch. We walk the neighborhood in St. Paul a lot. We see everything changing. The winter was getting so warm that almost towards mid-winter we were seeing buds on trees. Now what kind of signal does that send to the monarch? And this must be, this must be confusion, you know?

Emilie 
Yeah, that is a great observation. And this has been a worry, this idea of sort of timing mismatch of phenological mismatch that a lot of things warm up. A lot of plants will start to bud out early or bloom early and then what happens if something is migrating and can't adjust their migration to the same extent. So a couple responses there. It is a legitimate concern. Some of those milkweeds did come up earlier this week, but it seems like monarchs responded by also advancing their migration by a week or so. Yeah,  and that's probably because their migration is slow and if things are speeding up and it depends a lot on what's happening in Texas and Oklahoma. 

So they first migrate in late February, early March into Texas and Oklahoma and they lay eggs and reproduce there. It's generally a warmer spring there, then they'll advance their development speeds up and they'll migrate a little bit sooner and get here a little bit sooner. 

If the weather is cold in Texas and hot here, that's where you might start to worry because that first generation will be slower and then things will speed up in Minnesota and you're more likely to have a mismatch. But yeah, so again, there's so many variables that it's really hard to predict. Yeah.

Pat 
And right now we're experiencing intense heat in Texas, Arizona, the western states we're past mid-summer right now. How do these intense heats affect Monarchs? Are they already up here so it doesn't matter?

Emilie 
Yeah, so right now, so it's August 13th, any monarch thats breeding in Minnesota is gonna migrate. They can tell by the declining photo period and the angle of the sun and the fact that you have these really big day night temperature swings. All of those things are kind of cues to the developing caterpillar that I need when I come out as an adult, I need to start flying south. I'm not gonna reproduce. 

And so the monarchs that are developing right now in Minnesota, the fact that there's a cooler night swinging actually helps 'em to buffer some of this heat stress. We've done some rearing in the lab and climate chambers where if you set them at a constant temperature, a constant high temperature is actually more stressful than if they have a high temperature during the day and then it's cooler at night. That's less stressful. And so that might be one way they can deal with the warmer temperatures. 

They also, during a really hot portion of the day, a lot of caterpillars will move on their plant. They'll move up or down the plant, they'll move to shady parts, they'll move to another, an area under a tree that's cooler. And the monarch caterpillars, ... they can move around quite a bit to kind of buffer that temperature stress, which is good.  

Pat 
So can you tell us why the number of eastern monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico has been the smallest in a decade? What's going on?

Emilie 
Great question. So lots of people have been speculating about this. The hypothesis that probably has the most support for this last winter, low numbers was the extensive drought last year. So much of the explanation around the population size for monarchs has to do with just weather and some of these weather variations and how that affects the migration and how many eggs they lay and how many offspring survive. And the fact that there was such an extensive drought last year caused really low survival. So the number of monarchs that made it to Mexico was lower. And hopefully this year the weather's more favorable and they'll be able to sort of recover from that by having a more successful reproduction at the level of the population. That said, I'll also step back for a minute and say that, overall, over the last three decades there's been a sort of steady decline in monarch numbers.

Emilie 
And that's probably not just weather, but probably a bunch of other factors. So things like, there's been a lot of habitat loss of areas with milkweed. There's also been shifts in how we do agriculture in terms of using more herbicide resistant crops. And when you use herbicide resistant crops and you actually spray more herbicide, that ends up killing milkweed. And milkweed grows really well in ditches and roadsides and areas right next to crops. And if you're spraying your crops with herbicide and killing that milkweed, then that's less milkweed that they can lay their eggs on and uh, grow up on.

Pat 
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because you segued into my next question. 

Emilie
Oh great!  

Pat
In June, I came across a New York Times article titled “New Detective Work on Butterfly Declines Reveals a Prime Suspect.” This Midwest study shows that while climate change and habitat loss are significant, as you just said, agricultural insecticides, especially noenicitinoids, did I say that wrong?

 Emilie 
A lot of people just say neonics because it's easier to say than noenicitinoids.

Pat 
I'm gonna say that again. I'm gonna save face. Yes. And especially the neonics now the neonics have the biggest impact on butterfly population, and it goes on to say that these insecticides absorb into plant tissues. They have deadly effects on butterflies even though they're effective against agricultural pests. So what would you say about this situation And I’ll remind you we only have like 45 minutes for this interview.

Emilie 
Okay. How many more questions do you have because, oh, a huge, okay. This question about insecticides is a huge can of worms potentially in terms of research. So reign me in if I go off on too many tangents. 

There are a lot of pesticides and part of the problem with pesticides is that there's so many and there's not a lot of monitoring in terms of what's applied. And so it's kind of hard to study. Let's start with agriculture.  Neonics are used quite a bit in agriculture, but there are a bunch of other things that are used as well. We've actually done some surveys of insecticides on milkweeds across Minnesota. We haven't published it yet, but I’ll go ahead and tell you the results. We actually found zero neonics on the plants that we surveyed. We found a whole bunch of other stuff that was even more concerning.

Emilie 
And so that's part of the issue with pesticides. There are, you know, hundreds of things that people could apply and a lot of them are systemic so they'll get into the plant. You can apply granular pesticides to the soil, it's taken up by the plant and it's in all of the leaves. And so anything that munches on those leaves might die depending on the amount in there. 

There are also pesticides that are classified as organic. So like BT for example, which is a toxin from bacteria is classified as organic or at least it used to be, but it will kill any caterpillar when it's sprayed on the plant. And yeah, BT crops as well. So genetically engineered crops that produce this toxin from bacteria. You know, on one hand those are good and that it means you have to spray less pesticide all over the place, but the plant then is toxic.

Emilie 
So anything that feeds on it will die. So that's in agriculture. One area that I think is actually as concerning, if not more concerning 'cause it's less studied is pesticide application in residential use. Because in a lot of cases, so in agriculture people are very budget conscious and there's a lot of attention to an integrated pest management. There's a lot of attention to, I don't wanna apply a pesticide unless I really have to because it's really expensive overall. And in some agricultural situations, pesticide application is pretty conservative, which is good if you're thinking about the death of monarchs. 

But in residential use it's a lot more liberal I would say in terms of the use because people, they care about their lawns, they care about their yards and they often have a much larger budget to spend on their lawn. 

And there are also companies that sell packages that you know, we will come to your house and do preventative maintenance for mosquitoes by spraying every other week. And those things don't just kill mosquitoes, they kill like all the bugs. But that has been a lot less studied in terms of its impacts on the broader insect population in part because it's hard to get data. You have to go to individual houses and figure out what's being applied and then scale that up somehow to think about the population of the insects. Yes, pesticides are worrisome.

Pat 
I'm so glad you brought up residential lawns and I wanted to shift gears in this conversation and talk about lawns, specifically the history of lawns in the United States. And to do this, we have to kinda go back in the way back machine and start with the 1600’s in England and France, when castles would clear cut large areas so they could see the enemy invader coming from any point in the castle.

By 1700’s, grass lawns were the hallmark of landscape design for the European wealthy. And lawns were a status symbol of wealth. So colonial American landowners imitated European landscapes using grazing animals and manual labor to maintain their lawns. Even Jefferson at Monticello was smitten with lawns. The invention of the lawnmower in the 1830s made lawn maintenance easier. As cities expanded, the ideas of suburban living became popular. The lawn as a symbol of social status became very popular.

Pat 
By early 20th century, the Garden City Movement, which encouraged the integration of green spaces in urban planning, really popularized lawns for residential areas. 

In post-war America, home ownership boomed and the single family home with the well maintained lawn was the height of suburban life. Now the lawn care industry ignited the use of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. So the average homeowner could have that perfect yard. 

Fast forward to now with awareness of the damage traditional long care practices have done to the environment. Many people are increasingly replacing traditional lawns with alternatives like native plant gardens, pollinator friendly habitats and vegetable gardens. Now Emily, for those people looking to replace their lawns with native plant gardens, what are the first steps they should take?

Emilie 
Great question. So if you wanna replace your lawn, it kind of depends on what you wanna replace it with? Do you wanna turn it into a kind of like a clover field, a bee lawn, or do you wanna turn it into a garden or a prairie planting or, so depending on where you wanna go with that, it might influence what your first steps are. But often the first step is getting rid of the lawn. And so that can be digging it up, it can be putting cardboard over it or something to kind of smother it. Some people actually use herbicide to kill the lawn first. I know!

Pat 

Really? 

Emilie 

Okay. So I'm a fan of smother it with cardboard or something like that to kind of kill the grass that's underneath or dig things up with a pickax is another common way that I've done it. 

But if you wanna just have clover, you don't need to do anything. You can just seed clover into your lawn and just be a little less perfectionistic about what grows up and just let other things grow there besides the lawn and slowly convert it over to something besides the lawn. 

If you wanna do a prairie though, often knocking back what's there and then seeding in native seeds over the winter will work better 'cause it takes a while for them to get established.

Pat 
So if somebody says, Hey, I want to set up a situation that will attract and support monarch butterflies, what would they do?

Emilie 
So if it were me, I would have a little pocket. So we actually did this with the roadside in front of our house there. It was easy because we had construction on our road that ripped it out in 2017. So they completely redid the road, but we treated that as a blank slate. It was just dirt that winter. We just seeded a ton of prairie seeds, grass and a lot of different flowers. 

And a lot of the prairie seeds require cold stratification. You can't just throw the seeds out in April or May. They need the cold winter. And so the best thing to do is actually to seed 'em out the day before it snows, you know, in December or January so that they get trapped in the snow and pressed down in the snow. But they need the cold. And if you can't do that, then often what people do is put them in wet paper towels in the refrigerator for six weeks and then you can plant them in a pot and plant plugs in.

Emilie 
But it's much easier, especially if you have a half an acre to just throw seeds out in January. If you aren't starting with the bare dirt, I'd take cardboard or mulch or plastic or something like that and put it down in September to kill what's there. It will look ugly for a while, but you can tell your neighbors that. We actually put up a sign that says, “restoration and progress. Bear with us. Sorry if it's ugly for a little while.” Yeah, because it is ugly for a little while, and usually the first year it looks really weedy. You've gotta let stuff grow, you mow it generally once or twice just to kind of knock a lot of the invasive species will come up really early. They're kind of early blooming, early growing, so it helps to knock them back a little bit with mowing once or twice. But then let the natives grow, build some biomass and root volume and stuff like that the first year. And then it will start to look better the second year. Clover's a lot easier 'cause it will start, you can just seed it in to an existing lawn and it'll start to bloom pretty soon.

Pat
Actually. It's has a voracious blooming effect. Yes. I spread clover for the bees. 

Emilie 
The bees love it. The bees love it. It's dense. Unless it's not really a good monarch plant, but it's a great pollinator plant.

Pat 
Okay. I have to say, because I'm talking to you, I have an area for the monarchs, I just want that on the record. Yes, of course. Now I wanna ask you ,for city dwellers with really tiny little yards and they wanna create habitats for monarchs, what can they do?

Emilie 
You don't need much space. Even a little, little bit that, and this is often why they're called pocket prairies. They're really little spaces. It can still be incredibly valuable habitat because monarchs move around a lot. And so even the reproductive non migratory generation in the middle of the summer, they move, move around a whole lot. And so a female who's looking for plants to lay eggs on, she can find your milkweed, even if it's in the middle of the city, lay a couple eggs and then keep going. So really any habitat is great, even if you just have five milkweed plants and a bunch of other nectarine plants that can still be valuable habitat.

Pat 
You know, we talked about the perils of using pesticides and I can imagine some of my listeners saying, well that's great, but I have this problem. So what are effective alternatives to pesticides that people can use to protect their gardens but still be friendly to pollinators?

Emilie
That's a good question. 

Pat
Now you're looking off to the side. I'm

Emilie
I'm looking off to the side because yeah, what's going on.

Pat 
Emily?

Emilie 
I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I do. We have this really huge pollinator planting and, this is anecdotal evidence. So I was looking off to the side because this, because I'm a scientist and I like to actually collect data and I don't have data. This is anecdotal evidence. 

My anecdotal evidence is that the fact that we don't use pesticides and we have so many plantings in our yard,  our predator community is huge. We have for example, a ton of wasps. You can go into the garden, and you can watch the wasps going back and forth on the kale looking for cabbage white caterpillars. And when they find them, they grab them and kill them and take them back to their nest. So  my hypothesis is that by managing organically, like truly organically without any pesticides that are killing the bugs, we're just letting the actual community of insects be there. And they are self-regulatory. There are lots of caterpillars that eat plants and there are lots of predators that eat the caterpillars. So, I would say provide lots of plants and you'll have predators and they will regulate the pests for you. 

Pat 
So, in a sense you're saying Emily, as human beings, we should just mind our own business, and let the nature and the monarchs and pollinators and wasps and the animal world, whatever in the insect world take care of itself. Is that correct?

Emilie 
For the most part, there might be some places where you might need some extra intervention, especially if they're like invasive species that are out of control because they don't have their natural bio controls there because they were displaced from their native community.  But yes, in general, if you restore the whole ecosystem, there are those checks and balances in there.

Pat
Now I wanna shift gears and talk about social acceptance of wild yards.

Emilie 
Yes.

Pat
How can homeowners balance creating a wild monarch friendly yard with societal expectations for well-manicured lawns? And you used an expression in that article, “cues of care”, it's C.U.E.S. Okay, take it away, Emily. 

Emilie 
Yes. So, “cues of care.” I love that expression that this, this has actually come up. Some researchers in Michigan came up with this idea of “cues of care” and it's kinda like what it sounds, it's some kind of indicator that you are taking care of your yard and that is what really matters to people. So yes, lawns are a thing. There are certain expectations about lawns, but even if you have areas of your yard that are wild, research has shown that if there are small indicators there that you are still there. That you still live there and you take care of your lawn and you, or you take care of your yard, then it's socially acceptable. So these can be things like mowing around the edge or mowing a path through it or putting up a sign or keeping out some of the really ugly weeds.

Emilie 
Anything that looks like that you're taking care of it, that's what really seems to matter to people. There's also an issue of kind of the threshold of a number of people who are doing something weird and different. If you are the first person in your neighborhood to put in a pollinator planting, it's gonna be harder than if you're, you know, number 20 outta 40. In that case, talking to people and telling them why you're doing it, but also putting up signs. So I put up signs by our prairie planting and I have my email on that too, in case someone has questions. No one sent me an email, but people do talk to me all the time when I'm out there working on it. And usually, it's positive things like I really love your prairie and I've had a few people that I wanna put in a prairie in my yard. And so I've given people advice on how to do that. Some people don't wanna put in a prairie, in some ways it's a lot easier to just mow your lawn. And so that's fine too. You know, we can all coexist. 

Pat 
What you're talking about is communication, right. Really is letting your neighbors know what's going on. And now in our neighborhood,

Emilie
Right,

Pat 
We have a city lot in St. Paul. When you walk the neighborhood, there are little signs everywhere. “Be friendly garden,” “monarch friendly garden.” One person had roped off in April saying, coming soon, pollinator garden. And now she has this beautiful garden of wild plantings. But it was almost when she planted it, it was like, oh boy, stay tuned. So, every time you walk the neighborhood and seen the season change, you could see these plants coming up!

Emilie 
Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I kind of joke with my family that I've kind of said in, in our yard, it either needs to be something, if we're gonna plant something, it either needs to be for native insects and pollinators or it needs to be something we can eat. So, like the rest of our yard is sort of edible landscaping and gardening and stuff. And that also has kind of a wild deal to it. Especially our vegetable garden this summer has just kind of gone crazy. 

Pat 
Well, all the rain

Emilie
Oh my. Yes, exactly. 

Pat 
And the hot house temperatures.

Emilie 
Exactly. Yeah. But it's a communication issue as well. A lot of people are excited about the garden, but we also just give stuff away when we have extra squash. Like two weeks ago we had so much extra squash and I just put two boxes out on our sidewalk, and it was all gone within two hours. And so, I think a lot of it is just communicating with your neighbors and talking with your neighbors about the benefits of not having a lawn and using that space for something else.

Pat
Yeah, yeah. Can you share some successful examples of roadside or urban habitat restoration projects that have significantly benefited monarchs?

Emilie 
Yeah, I can talk about roadside restoration because we worked on that a lot. It's a little bit controversial because of the collision risk, but at least on low traffic. Roads are low speed roads. The collision risks are pretty low for monarchs. When you think about it, there are millions of acres of potential roadside habitat in Minnesota alone. And generally, it's rights of way, you usually need to keep it clear so you can see. 

Prairie habitat is great for that as opposed to putting in trees which could block view. But the potential is huge. Also, for monarchs, milkweed is kind of weedy and it actually loves roadside. So in along Minnesota roadsides you can get densities of milkweeds that are several thousand stems of milkweed every mile of road, which is huge. If you think about, one milkweed to raise one monarch, that's lots of possible monarchs.

Emilie 
There's a lot of potential there. Probably the hardest thing about roadside restoration, roadsides tend to favor invasive species and that's probably because it's high disturbance. You have a seed bank, and it's pretty nitrogen rich soil from exhaust and that tends to favor non-native species as well. But there are some species that do really well in roadsides despite that. So like goldenrod, beebalm, milkweed, a bunch of grasses. And so there have been some successes using these sorts of pollinator friendly or native mixes and roadside restoration. And certainly, if people are managing their right of way, but then it becomes even easier because, so like our prairie is our roadside and technically it's the right of way, but the county, we've talked to them, they've given us permission to plant stuff there and they're excited. They're like, yay, this family is managing this roadside for us and we don't have to do it.

Emilie
So yeah, I think roadsides have a lot of potential for those reasons that can support a lot of monarchs. It starts to get iffy when you're thinking about roads that have a lot of traffic. Yeah. And then what if you're attracting a monarch there and then it gets hit by a car? The tricky part to this question is that monarchs are cross crossing roads anyway because they, they're gonna cross the road whether there's habitat there or not, because they migrate and because they move around a lot. So I think the real question, and something I would love to do more research on is how, how does that habitat there change their behavior? Does it actually slow them down so they're more likely to notice cars or are they so distracted they're less likely to notice cars? That's, uh, research I would love to do one day. So

Pat
Emily, as we wrap up, considering all your research and experience, what is your vision for the future of monarch butterflies and your work in pollinator conservation?

Emilie
Yeah, so I kind of see humans and wildlife including monarchs as coexisting and thinking about how, you know, your question about lawns. How can we make very small changes to the way we live to allow more organisms to live with us? And I think for a lot of species like monarchs that move around a lot and then that can deal with some amount of disturbance. Even just converting your lawn to a prairie planting can have a huge effect. Or even just using fewer pesticides. And if 10% or 20% of the people are doing that and a monarch is moving around the city, they can make use of that habitat. So how can these kind of small interventions scale up to really conserve things? I think that's the future because you know, we're not gonna get rid of cities and we're not gonna get rid of road. So how can we make, how can we make them more green?

Pat 
Sometimes small things can have a huge ripple effect. So, Emily, this is such an important issue. How do we keep this momentum going, saving monarch butterflies and other pollinators? What can we do to keep this going?

Emilie
That's a great question. I think that a lot of it has to do with the energy around it and that people love to do it and it makes them happy and it gives them energy and they see other people doing it and they post their pictures online and they post them on iNaturalist  and it gives them a sense of purpose. It gives them a sense of fulfillment to do it and then it spreads to other people when they, when they see them doing it. I think it's just keeping that momentum going by, by sharing the energy.

Pat
Yeah. It just seems like we're living with an abundance of opportunity here.

Emilie 
That's true.  I also wonder whether there are other creative ways we could think about, like, could we get a carbon tax break if you convert your lawn to a pollinator prairie because those roots store way more carbon and so yeah, is that in the future? But that would be awesome if I got a tax break for my yard. 

Pat
I imagine it would. Especially your yard. Well, Emily, thank you for joining us today. This was awesome, just hearing your expertise and insights and yes, anecdotal stories as well as the data, but thank you so much for taking time to join us. Thank you. Well

Emilie 
Thank, thank you so much Pat for having me. This was a really fun conversation. I feel like we could talk for another two hours. 

Pat 
OMG, You know, we get offline, we could talk up a blue streak. 

Okay listeners, thank you for joining us today and you guys know what to do. You know what to do with your yards now. You know what to dig up. All I can say is carry on. 

Oh and if you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends and share the good word. Thank you. Bye.