Champions of the Order Lepidoptera

Earlier this summer I attended a workshop titled 'Finding and Rearing Giant Silk Moths' at the Elgin Public Museum a few miles north of where I live. I had no idea I would be interested in this before I received an email inviting me to attend and grew increasingly fascinated the more I watched these creatures up close. The workshop was led by Jim McGrath of the Nature Discovery Center in Michigan and its primary focus was education but also a hope to reintroduce these once plentiful giants back into our Northern Illinois area. My friends and I each came away from the workshop with printed instructions and three tiny Polyphemus caterpillars chewing on a leaf in a small resealable plastic bag. I spent the next month carrying my three guys around in a jar, bringing them to meetings and sharing the wonder of their beauty with whoever was polite enough to listen. I took one of them in its final instar to our church for a segment called 'For All Ages' to share with the children and was pleasantly surprised to find like-minded moth fanciers in the young boys and dad in the photo above.

They now refer to me as Moth Lady and when we saw each other again this past Sunday, they invited me to come over and visit their collection of caterpillars in various stages of development. They especially like to visit a spot west of town that has several milkweed plants growing unmolested from the weed killing townies. From these plants, they collect monarch butterfly eggs to take home and raise and then release.

At the Climate Reality training I attended earlier this month, I became aware of the current plight of the Monarchs through a fellow trainer, mentor Ina Warren,  and how important it is for these delicate beauties to have waystations throughout North America, such as the one my friends are standing in above. If you would like to be listed as a waystation for the Monarchs as they make they migrate through your area, click through to this Facebook page for more information: Milkweeds for Monarchs Waystations. 

From the Monarch Watch website: 

Why We Are Concerned
Milkweeds and nectar sources are declining due to development and the widespread use of herbicides in croplands, pastures and roadsides. Because 90% of all milkweed/monarch habitats occur within the agricultural landscape, farm practices have the potential to strongly influence monarch populations.

Unfortunately, the remaining milkweed habitats in pastures, hayfields, edges of forests, grasslands, native prairies, and urban areas are not sufficient to sustain the large monarch populations seen in the 1990s. Monarchs need our help.

What You Can Do
To offset the loss of milkweeds and nectar sources we need to create, conserve, and protect milkweed/monarch habitats. We need you to help us and help monarchs by creating "Monarch Waystations" (monarch habitats) in home gardens, at schools, businesses, parks, zoos, nature centers, along roadsides, and on other unused plots of land. Without a major effort to restore milkweeds to as many locations as possible, the monarch population is certain to decline to extremely low levels.

8/24/2013 Clarification: Orlie R. Taylor founded Monarch Watch and originated the idea of Waystations. My friend Ina Warren is an ardent supporter of the program and owner of the Milkweeds for Monarchs Waystations Facebook page promoting the waystations and alerting others to Monarch crisis.