A highway commissioner from Chicago Heights and an Illinois Garden Club official from Frankfort have joined forces in a statewide campaign to provide “rest stops” for Monarch butterflies on roadsides and back yards.
The population of the Monarch butterfly, the Illinois state insect, dropped to an all-time low in recent years due to deforestation at its winter home in Mexico and the negative impact of herbicides and pesticides on the milkweed plants that it needs to lay eggs in North America.
“I saw a movie at the Museum of Science and Industry about the scientist who discovered that the migratory pattern of the butterfly is 3,000 miles,” Joseph Stanfa, Bloom Township highway commissioner, said. “These delicate creatures travel from Mexico to Canada each year, and Illinois is sort of a superhighway in that migration. I came out thinking this is one of the most amazing things in the world.
“And I learned the Monarch butterfly population is declining because of what man has done to its environment,” he said. “I thought that we have to do something to stop this. There’s nothing as beautiful as a butterfly. Author Robert Heinlein called them self-propelled flowers.
“I thought there are so many things in this world that we can’t do anything about, bad things, but here’s something that we can change, a way to make a difference. Who doesn’t love butterflies?”
And so Stanfa came up with the idea of persuading every other township highway commissioner in the state to join him in planting four-by-six-foot patches of milkweed and pollinating flowers along roadsides throughout Illinois.
Monarch butterflies cannot survive without milkweed. It’s the only plant on which they lay their eggs and that the caterpillars, which turn into the butterflies, can eat.
But throughout the United States, and especially in the Midwest, the increased use of pesticides and herbicides has seriously depleted the milkweed population, which is a native plant.
Stanfa soon discovered that he had a major ally in his quest to help the Monarchs in Kay MacNeil. An avid gardener and member of the Garden Clubs of Illinois, MacNeil persuaded that organization to launch a “Milkweed for Monarchs” campaign this year before meeting up with Stanfa. Her goal is to get homeowners to start milkweed gardens.
“They’re not weeds, they’re flowering plants, and they can be quite beautiful,” she said. “I have six varieties in my own garden, which has won several awards. “We’re selling packets of seed for $2 to anyone who wants them,” MacNeil said. “They’re very easy to grow. You just plant them and water them once and nature does the rest. Milkweed seeds are very difficult to find in garden shops in the Chicago area, and while you can order them by mail, they are often quite expensive. The plants are even more difficult to find in this state, although I’ve talked to people at several nurseries in the area about starting to stock them because I believe people are really going to respond to this project.”
Stanfa, president of the Highway Commissioners Association of Illinois and past-president of the Township Officials Association of Illinois, is speaking to conventions and meetings of highway commissioners throughout the state to urge them to plant milkweed along roads this spring.
“The seed is very cheap, especially if you buy it in bulk, and I’m working on potential donors to pay for the cost,” he said. “It would take literally 20 minutes to plant one of the small gardens that I’m talking about. And you don’t have to do anything to maintain it because it takes care of itself.”
Stanfa gets so excited talking about the project that he literally bounces up and down in his chair during a meeting at a Panera restaurant.
“Everyone wants to make a difference in this world, to leave a mark, to make things better,” he exudes. “Well, we can do this. We can save the Monarchs, preserve them for our children and grandchildren and enjoy them for future generations, just as we all did as children ourselves.”
In addition to planting milkweed seeds, Stanfa hopes to persuade his colleagues to offer seeds in bins at township offices throughout Illinois.
“My idea right now is that we ask for only voluntary donations, maybe have a box for envelopes that people can drop their money in, but I haven’t worked that all out yet,” he said. “I just want everyone to participate in this. I can see grandfathers and grandchildren doing this together — watching the plants grow, watching the Monarchs arrive to lay their eggs, watching the caterpillars come out and then watching the chrysalis develop and the butterfly magically appear.
“Can you imagine anything more amazing than that?”
MacNeil laughs as she watches Stanfa’s enthusiasm.
“We’re a great pair,” she said, noting that Stanfa is a former hockey player at the University of Illinois, while calling herself a “little old garden lady.” “We appeal to two different kinds of groups and together I think we make a great team.”
Doug Taron, curator of biology and vice president of conservation at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, said planting milkweed along roadsides and in home gardens could definitely help the Monarchs.
“The population is probably half of what we use to see when we were children,” Taron said. “The population is maybe three-quarters of what it was 10 years ago.”
Ernest Williams, professor of biology at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., who has studied butterflies for more than three decades, said that while the Monarch is in peril, reforestation efforts in Mexico over the past few years markedly increased the population this winter. However, he notes that the depletion of milkweed has created a new challenge.
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He said that while roadside planting can help, larger areas of 10 to 15 acres would create a better environment for the butterflies to thrive.
That’s why I think the Cook County Forest Preserve District should be recruited for this effort because there are large open areas that would be perfect for the meadow-style planting of milkweed.
Both milkweed and pollinating plants together would not only help the Monarchs but the bee population, which also has been in decline.
“While the caterpillars need the milkweed to survive,” MacNeil said, “the mature butterfly needs pollinating plants. So you really want a combination of the two in close proximity.”
Stanfa said his plan for roadside plantings also include the purple cone flower to provide phlox to attract the butterflies.
There are all types of milkweed plants, but the seeds the Illinois Garden Club will offer the public are Butterfly Weed, which has orange or yellow flowers, and Swamp Milkweed, which has pink or white flowers.
“These are perennials so they will come back every year,” MacNeil said. “You can just drop the seed on dirt or even on top of snow, and they will find a home in the dirt and grow. You don’t really need to put dirt on top of them. Later this year, we’re going to launch a milkweed seed collection effort and ask everyone to bring the seeds from their milkweed plants in to us so that we can distribute even more seeds next year.”
MacNeil can be reached at 815-469-1294 or via email at [email protected].
“I just envisions the roads of Illinois full of Monarch butterflies this summer, and it makes me smile,” Stanfa said. “I’m having signs made up that say, Rest Stop for Monarchs. Cars can pull along the road and watch them land.
“The Monarch is our state insect after all. We ought to welcome them home this summer.”