Bring Back the Monarch!
The Monarch Butterfly needs your help.
You can help BIG by planting a few milkweed pod seeds. Just be sure to plant the correct milkweed pod seed for your region.
The monarch butterfly travels as many as 100 miles per day in its 3,000 mile migration south. During this journey it relies on the food it ate as a caterpillar which comes entirely from the milkweed pod. Adult monarch butterfly females leave their eggs on the underside of milkweed pod leaves. When the eggs hatch the tiny larvae eat the milkweed pod leaves, grow into a caterpillar and metamorphose into a chrysalis. The caterpillars feast on milkweed pods at a rate of up to one leaf in five minutes! Their bodies grow over 2700 times their size when hatched and in the process they take in a poisonous toxin called Cardiac Glycosides which keeps the monarch safe from vertebrate predators such as birds, lizards and frogs.
Monarch butterfly numbers are down. A number of factors are involved: Habitat losses in the United States and Canada, degradation of the forests that support overwintering monarchs in Mexico, and catastrophic mortality of monarchs due to winter storms at the overwintering sites. All of these have reduced the monarch migration.
We can “Bring Back the Monarchs” but we will need your help and that of many partners and supporters to do so.
The members of Jolly Lama Creations are doing their part to help out the monarch butterfly by collecting wild milkweed pod seeds in a sustainable way and sending them in to Monarch Watch so they can be distributed to areas that need more milkweed pods. Monarch Watch is a nonprofit educational outreach program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. If you want to help by planting the correct milkweed pods in your area or learn more about the amazing monarch butterfly visit www.monarchwatch.org/bring-back-the-monarchs.
