The Mystery of the Missing Monarchs

By this week last year not only did our drought tolerant  Monarch Waystation have monarch eggs, we had already hatched caterpillars. I took this photo to the right of a male monarch on our swamp milkweed last July 4th. So far this year we have absolutely nothing: no eggs, no adults.

This past winter scientists recorded the lowest number ever of overwintering monarchs in Mexico.  The World Wildlife Fund reports a 59% decline in just the past year. This is due to a number of factors including winter habitat loss, fewer milkweed plants, pesticide and herbicide use. Unfortunately there's no one quick fix (of course planting milkweed in your garden is a big help). What I am afraid of is that we're seeing the impact of these record low numbers here in the Northeast. I'm hoping the butterflies are just late due to the colder than usual spring, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If anyone has seen monarchs please leave me a comment on when and where. 

While I am awaiting the return of the monarchs I have been busy maintaining the riverside native gardens I installed last year with the help of the Slow the Flow Grant from US Fish and Wildlife.  Our certified Monarch Waystation has exploded with returning swamp milkweed, butterflyweed, joe-pye weed, echinacea, ox-eye sunflowers, New Jersey tea, yarrow and white snakeroot. I even pruned back some of the larger perennials to expose the swamp milkweed hoping the monarchs could see it better.

Plants around the other areas of the garden are doing well. My one giant sunflower from last year even self-seeded and its offspring are towering over the beesbalm by kitchen window. The good news is the hummingbirds are back, they must have remembered the buffet I planted for them in the front yard. They've been devouring nectar from the beesbalm and liatris and often hover impatiently over the cardinalflower which is just starting to open.

Despite the record heat wave of the past week I've been slowly tearing out a patch of ancient non-native vinca that doesn't even flower. In its place I'm planting a blueberry hedge, and if I'm lucky my kids will even let my husband and me eat some.

Once the heat breaks I'll start dealing with some of the run-off issues that have been bothering me. The mini rain garden has been doing an amazing job of trapping all the water from the rear roof. But the heavy rains of June and early July have been washing right down the side and back yards and into the river. With some leveling, terracing and ditches in the side yard I plan to force as much rain water as I can back into the ground before it washes straight out to the Atlantic. The whole point of the Slow the Flow grant is to encourage property owners to direct storm water into the ground and not straight out to sea thereby preventing large floods and later droughts. My 0.3 acres might be small, but every little drop helps.

Lizzie releasing one of our raised monarchs last August.

And in the meantime, while awaiting the temps to drop, I'm keeping a close eye on my milkweed. And this is one of two little girls who are getting a little impatient to raise their caterpillars.

UPDATE July 20th: This morning I found our first monarch egg, and had another three by the end of the day. In the late afternoon I finally spotted an actual monarch flying through the yard! So they're here!

the monarch waystation

Monarch on swamp milkweed

I hadn't planned on creating a monarch waystation. Last weekend I rescued a few daylilies from the backyard where our fence was going in and quickly stuck them in a sunny spot near our mailbox, and I hit more plastic. This is an area of the yard that I hadn't planned on landscaping this summer, it's a border of dense beach roses (Rosa rugosa) where the rest of the yard was just bare mulch. At least it had plants, so it could wait. And I assumed since it had plants there wasn't any plastic sheeting, I was wrong.

 Of course I couldn't leave the plastic in and in tearing it out I discovered all the plants in this area, including the four foot high beach roses, were growing on top of the plastic. In getting out the plastic I ended up taking out a lot of the beach roses and suddenly had a nice patch of empty, sunny dirt.

Monarch on butterflyweed

That night I read an article in the summer edition of Country Gardens entitled "Of Milkweeds and Monarchs" (if I could find it online I would include the link) and its message about declining monarchs really struck home. The article sites many facts from monarchwatch.org, and I instantly went online and poured over their website. Simply put, monarch butterflies are in crisis for the following reasons:

• Roundup resistant crops now dominate the midwest, meaning about 100 million acres of corn and beans are now sprayed with the glyphosate, creating milkweed-free fields. Monarchs making their way from the north to overwinter in Mexico now navigate a 1000 mile near-nectarless, flowerless, waterless landscape from Kansas through Oklahoma, Texas and into northern Mexico. 
• Development of subdivisions, shopping centers, etc. now tops 6,000 acres a day. That's 2.2 million acres a year where there was often milkweed and other butterfly supporting plants. 
• Roadside management practices of mowing and herbicides now often creates monocultures of grass, not native wildflowers. 
• Illegal logging in the monarch's wintering forest in Mexico has diminished their former 23 acre habitat to a mere 5. 

Monarch on blazing star (Liatris)

It was clear what I had to do.  That nice, newly-cleared and plastic-free sunny patch was destined to be a monarch waystation (places that provide resources necessary for monarchs to produce successive generations and sustain their migration). In fact, the whole yard could qualify. I already planted nectar plants like blanket flower, sedum, beesbalm, blazing star and black eyed susans. I started a milkweed strain called butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa) from seeds this winter and they're about 4 inches tall now and will be amazing in a few years. I just needed at least one more milkweed species to qualify as a certified "monarch waystation" with monarchwatch.org.

A few days ago I went out and purchased swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and tomorrow a friend with a farm in Rowley is letting me take a few common milkweed plants (A. syriaca) from his unmown fields and then I will have all three species of native milkweed. Where there was once a monoculture of introduced beach rose there will now be milkweed, blanket flower, blazing star, yarrow, echinacea, cardinalflower, and Joe-pye weed. My three-year-old is now eagerly awaiting the appearance of those stunning little yellow and black caterpillars. She's already learned all about monarchs in her preschool and told me one day last fall that she just couldn't eat lunch because she was a monarch and was busy migrating to Mexico. I thought for her sake I would certify our new monarch waystation with monarchwatch and she could proudly display this sign.

As far as I can tell from the International Monarch Waystation Registry our waystation is the first certified in Ipswich, MA. I sure hope it's not the last. Stay tuned for photos of the finished, and flowering, monarch waystation.