CARCD Celebrates Pollinator Week with a Focus on the Western Monarch Butterfly 06/22/2021
By Nancy Wahl-Scheurich
The California Association of Resource Conservation Districts (CARCD) is celebrating its busiest Pollinator Week ever, managing several programs that support creation, preservation, and enhancement of monarch butterfly habitat on working lands in California. The western monarch butterfly population has declined over 99 percent in the past 20 years. Western monarch counts in 2020 were the lowest yet, and the next several years will be a critical time to bring back the butterflies from a path to extinction, so CARCD has made monarch conservation a high priority.
“At CARCD, we know how big the need is to save the western monarch and we are working extra hard to make it happen”, said Karen Buhr, executive director of CARCD. “We’re enabling projects being carried out by California’s resource conservation districts (RCDs) that are employing the most important strategies for bolstering the western monarch population: protecting and restoring overwintering sites, providing nectar resources along the migratory flyway, and increasing the availability of early-season native milkweed. RCDs already work directly with state, federal, and local agencies, landowners, communities and other stakeholders, so they are perfectly situated to create monarch habitat throughout the monarch’s range in California.”
Since its focus on monarch conservation began in 2019, CARCD has coordinated the work of 11 RCDs who have added 11 acres of monarch breeding and nectar habitat across the state, with much more expected over the next year. They have also developed 36 monarch habitat plans for landowners interested in monarch conservation. This year CARCD began supporting seven new monarch projects involving 13 RCDs who will provide technical assistance to farmers and ranchers who want to create and restore monarch habitat on their land – helping with planning, design, permitting, planting, monitoring, and more.
Another CARCD program supported a native milkweed and nectar plant sale and outreach campaign in Sonoma County and will fund a project to pilot and document best practices for pollinator habitat creation on cannabis farms on the Central Coast. Nearly all of the projects are being carried out in the “Priority One Conservation Action Zone,” which encompasses the areas in California that biologists have determined to be most crucial for migrating monarchs.
“Our programs are enabling RCDs to carry out really impactful monarch conservation projects throughout California”, Buhr continued, “but it will take an all hands on deck to turn the monarch situation around. We are grateful to the Wildlife Conservation Board, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Legion of Bloom for funding our monarch programs. We hope many more Californians will join us and do what they can by planting native nectar plants and native milkweed, supporting state and federal funding for monarch conservation, participating in community science, and making donations to organizations doing monarch conservation. It’s Pollinator Week, so it’s a great time to get started!”