Check out Karen Wright’s July 28th “Everyday is Earth Day” podcast about Monarchs featuring Wendy Caldwell of Monarch Joint Venture.

Click this Read More to listen to the podcast.

The monarch has been declared endangered (not extinct) by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global advocacy organization that monitors biological diversity.

The monarch has not yet been recognized as endangered by the federal government’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This is the statement on their website:

In December 2020, after an extensive status assessment of the monarch butterfly, we determined that listing the monarch under the Endangered Species Act is warranted but precluded at this time by higher priority listing actions. With this finding, the monarch butterfly becomes a candidate for listing; we will review its status each year until we are able to begin developing a proposal to list the monarch.

Is the monarch federally protected now?
No. Our 12-month finding does not protect monarchs under the ESA at this time. We first must propose the monarch for listing as either an endangered or threatened species, gather and analyze public comments and any new information, and using the best available science, make a final decision and publish a final rule. That process is deferred while we work on higher-priority listing actions. 

Our Information for Planning and Consultation (IPaC) project planning tool identifies the monarch as a candidate species, and project developers, particularly federal agencies, may choose to voluntarily add conservation actions to conserve monarchs to their projects.

Experts on the monarch, including Karen Oberhauser and the Xerces Society, along with the IUCN, are raising our awareness and no doubt lobbying the Fish & Wildlife Service to declare the monarch as endangered. As yet the monarch is NOT protected under federal law. Nonetheless, there are Federal programs with funding to protect existing monarch habitat and create new habitat.

Katherine Brewer knows grasses, and restoring Prairie Dropseed in Minnesota prairies is her goal. In July she shared her knowledge with an attentive Lake Minnetonka Garden Club Membership audience highlighting her research for her masters degree from the University of Minnesota where she was honored this year with the graduate Horticultural Science award.

Prairie Dropseed, or Sporobolus heterolepsis, is an important native grass, ornamental and beautiful with graceful, arching leaves and wispy mop tops that flower in late summer, becoming three feet in height. It is commonly used and seen in landscape plantings.  As an ecologically beneficial native prairie grass it is a crucial source of food and shelter for bees, songbirds, and at least five species of native butterflies, including the skipper and skipperling.  Habitat loss has contributed to a decline in Prairie Dropseed numbers. Because it is slow to germinate when seedlings are young they are vulnerable to competition with other grasses, so establishment is challenging.  Her project involved planting thousands of landscape plugs of the grass on site at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. This extensive work was supported by the Hope Goddard Iselin Fellowship in Public Horticulture through the GCA granted to Katherine in 2021.

Katherine Brewer interned at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania and at Polly Hill Arboretum in Massachusetts. Her developing interest in plant conservation, curation, and public education led her to the University of Minnesota for a graduate degree. She worked with Dr. Mary Meyer, professor emeritus and extension horticulturalist who is also the curator of the ornamental grass collection at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. With growing interest and awareness it is hoped that there will be an increase in the establishment and survival of Prairie Dropseed in restored prairies.

We do know that the grass will always be greener wherever Katherine decides to go!