Chapter Meeting: The Monarch/Milkweed Initiative

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St. Marks Refuge Ranger, and FNPS member, Scott Davis has developed a long term plan to support the monarch butterfly in the Big Bend of Florida by sourcing local ecotypes of milkweed species to provide an ongoing viable seed source for the refuge, as well as distributing as many seedlings as possible to the conservation lands. More milkweeds = more monarchs!
The Monarch-milkweed imitative at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge is a program that sprang up in response to the federal initiative to “Save the Monarch!” http://www.fws.gov/savethemonarch/. (http://www.fws.gov/savethemonarch)

Monarchs are incredible creatures for many reasons. They make the longest migration of any species (3,000+ miles!) from as far as southern Canada to southern Mexico. They are important pollinator species and their decline is indicative of a problem spanning their entire range. Some estimates range from 90-99% decline since 1990. In order to bring back healthy numbers of monarchs, we need to increase numbers of their host plants, the milkweeds. Female monarchs only lay eggs on milkweeds as it is the only source of food for caterpillars.

As of the time of this writing, in November 2016, the Monarch migration was in full swing, and 2 monarchs with white stickers were spotted! This is significant because it shows that they were tagged by other citizen scientists at another location. One of the white tagged monarchs was October 5th in Rosetta McClain Gardens--Toronto, CANADA!!! This translates into flying 977 miles in just 32 days! Monarchs are incredible.

Scott will discuss the progress of the initiative in conserving and mapping native milkweed populations in 2016, the data from the 2016 fall migration, and the goals for the initiative in 2017.Updates to the project may be found on their Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/StMarksMilkweeds/?fref=ts

Scott Davis is a busy biologist, with Ethnobotany among his passions. He is a state board member for the Florida Native Plant Society, and president-elect for the Magnolia (Tallahassee) Chapter. In addition to his day job as ranger at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, he serves as Coordinator for the new Milkweed-Monarch Conservation Initiative, VP for Friends of Wakulla Springs, and as a committee member for the FWC Great Florida Birding Trail and Black Bear Stakeholders. He also owns a native plant nursery and is an officer of a non-profit agency on urban forest conservation.