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Western Monarch butterflies migrate to California each year to wait out the cold months, traveling hundreds of miles. Initial reports say that more than 200,000 monarchs have gathered along the coast. This winter forming huge clusters and Gros to stay warm. But the monarchs are in danger. Scientists say that in the 1980s, millions of monarchs came to California each year by 2020. That number dropped to fewer than 2000. The bakery's podcast team has been digging into the threats facing these essential pollinators reporter. Amanda STUI visited lake merit and Oakland looking for answers.
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There's a lot of monarchs flying around. Yeah. Oh wow. This
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Is their spot. I'm with Brooke Levin and Touro Rocha, looking for butterflies. A lot of people know that bees play an important role in pollination in how plants reproduce. It's less well known that butterflies do the same thing.
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I would see there's one Suning on the bottom of that brand right there.
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Yeah. Rocha got interested in butterflies while working for the city of Oakland. She used to landscape its parks. She realized over a decade ago that a lot of the things her crews did to make parks safe and tidy for visitors were bad for the creatures living there.
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I realized that my landscape practices were destroying habitat for pollinators and
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Pollinators are crucial to the food chain. They help plants reproduce and are a source of food for larger animals. Rocha decided to shift her practices to create habitat for creatures like bees and Monarch butterflies. They're meeting right there in front of us. She shows me a patch of milkweed. It's a plant with long flat smooth leaves that are, are a vibrant green color.
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You know, the milkweed is sorted the cruising zone, the males just cruise around it, waiting for a female to come in
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Rocha. Co-founded a, non-profit called the pollinator posse that offers training and resources to people who want to protect pollinators. Like the Monarch butterflies. She says, monarchs are the flashy ambassador for pollinators, which is fine by her. Once
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You help one pollinator, you're really helping them all.
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And a lot of people don't realize how much humans are hurting pollinators.
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So we can't let the monarchs go because it means we're failing the rest of the pollinators. The once the pollinators go, that songbird go, then the songbirds go. Guess what? And the bees go, we're a all gone. Cause you can have food.
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The last couple of years have been scary for Monarch lovers in 2020 observers counted fewer than 2000 monarchs along California's coast. That scary low in the 1980s, there were millions and even stranger. The butterflies behavior seems to be changing.
Speaker 2: (02:47)
We saw monarchs breeding throughout the year. My 37 years working in the parks in Oakland, never saw monarchs in may or June in this garden, mating or doing anything like that.
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Normally Monarch show up in the fall mate and rest what's called over wintering. Then take off again in the spring. But recently bay area residents have been seeing caterpillars and butterflies year round. And what is folks best guess or hypothesis at this point as to why that's happening?
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That's the controversy
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Roaches as scientists. Aren't sure what's going on. But some think if the Monarch population dips too low, monarchs will give up migrating all together. One thing is for sure, monarchs still need help. Loss of habitat, pesticides and climate change are all threatening. This beautiful bug.
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If we're willing to let an iconic species die, then we've really messed
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Up. But helping is trickier than it seems for years, well-meaning folks would raise monarchs in their homes or backyards.
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I was guilty of it. I reared a ton, you know, and I thought I was doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: (04:03)
Maybe you even raised monarchs in your elementary school classroom, but raising monarchs is actually illegal. Just like it's illegal to raise any wild animal.
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The problem with rearing them is if you rear them indoors, they don't get the cues from nature to know what part of the migration they are.
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There are two proven ways people can help pollinators like monarchs and their legal. A big one is making your garden pollinator friendly by growing nectar plants. That's what adult monarchs be and hummingbirds eat. But plants have to be pest side free.
Speaker 2: (04:41)
Ask the nurseries the hard questions because they'll tell us we use pesticides cuz no one wants to buy a plant that has aphids. Well, we want to see aphids because that means it hasn't been sprayed.
Speaker 3: (04:54)
Well, our caterpillars on the other hand only eat milkweed. Roaches says it really should be the native variety, not the tropical kind. That's because native milkweed goes dormant in the winter, which reinforces the monarch's traditional migration pattern and tropical milkweed can increase the spread of a deadly parasite that kills monarchs.
Speaker 2: (05:15)
We need to plant more native plants and more nectar plants in the winter here in the bay area for the monarchs. And um, we need to be gentler on the landscape.
Speaker 3: (05:30)
Roaches says the other big thing you can do to help Western monarchs is
Speaker 2: (05:34)
Count them. You know, we need to look into more observation. We just don't have the answers.
Speaker 3: (05:39)
This can be as simple as filling out an online form. When you see caterpillars or butterflies or you can volunteer to collect data with other butterfly helpers at places like children's ferry land in Oakland voice on. So if I talk to you like I'm talking to first graders, it's not gonna me in there for a meeting. This is Jackie Salas. She's in charge of the gardens at children's ferry land and is teamed up with Terry Smith of the pollinator posse to train volunteers, how to identify Monarch eggs and caterpillars. So we're not gonna be moving any eggs or caterpillars. We're just gonna be identifying what's going on on the plants that we have, citizen scientists like these volunt tier collect the data researchers all over the country will use to keep tabs on population health and patterns. You can see
Speaker 4: (06:23)
It. It's so tiny though. Oh my gosh. Yeah. See it. Yeah, that that's one of the eggs,
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But yes, usually without the information, these volunteers are collecting scientists wouldn't know where mono go or which habitat to target for restoration Torah Rocha says in the world of butterflies, citizen scientists have made a big impact.
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Scientists didn't know where monarchs went in the winter. It was citizen science that tagged them and found them in Mexico.
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These volunteers are committed. They come out once a week, searching for tiny, almost invisible specs on stems and leads. Rocha is inspired by the passion of citizen scientists working to say pollinators like the monarchs.
Speaker 2: (07:08)
I can't be any prouder than just sitting here watching them fluter by and knowing that, you know, we started this in 2011 and that the are still here
Speaker 3: (07:20)
Recently. Monarch enthusiasts got some hopeful news this year. The winter Monarch population is way up from the dismal 2020 numbers, early estimates show more than 200,000 butterflies over wintering along California's coast. But one good year. Doesn't spell relief for the Mon their long term survival still hangs in the balance. That was Amanda STUI reporting for the bay curious podcast.
