plant some native milkweed in your garden. Go to your local native plant nursery and ask them to sell you some milkweed that is native to your region. It’ll cost you just $5 and half an hour of gardening time (including all the watering). In 1-2 years, your garden will become a local hangout for monarch butterflies. You will see monarchs chasing each other in the air like squirrels; I kid you not. I even had a chrysalis by the door of my house last fall.

all along their route. I have milkweed along my back fence, courtesy of the last owner. Lots of monarchs and other butterflies in my yard.

https://monarchwatch.org/milkweed/prop.htm

I plucked a number of pods back around Oct just around the time they were ready to burst.
Separated the seeds, and they're tucked away in ZipLoc bags in the fridge.
I figure I'll start germinating them indoors sometime around the beginning of April (last frost here is early May).

with a report the following year telling us there was a small uptick in the count.

I grew up near a significant Monarch grove and grew to love them. That is, until they cut down the trees to make room for a McDonald's joint. Progress, Baby!

Three years ago, the monarch population visiting my yard dropped to spotting only 3 Monarchs over the summer. This year I had daily sightings of 6 to 12 Monarchs a day. There is a nursery that promotes native plants just 22 miles from where I live.

https://www.morningskygreenery.com/

People are planting milkweed in their gardens. The state of Minnesota has a free milkweed seed program that I used to get started in my yard. The state also has a seed planting program in the road ditches with modified mowing to support the growth of milkweed.


Some of the organizations sponsoring the milkweed seed plan are:

https://www.growmilkweedplants.com/minnesota.html

http://www.arboretum.umn.edu/SaveOurMonarchsLaunches.aspx

https://www.saveourmonarchs.org/

https://monarchjointventure.org/get-involved/create-habitat-for-monarchs

https://monarchlab.org/education-and-gardening

http://nababutterfly.com/monarchs-and-milkweeds/

Per Washington post Oct. 18

In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.

And the monarchs came. However, the european hornets (common here) consumed the caterpillars. I gave my plants away to a friend in a more predator free zone.

It’s just seemingly different in other places. I live near Tawas City, MI. watching for the monarchs at Tawas Point is a annual event. 2018 was huge here’s an article about it.

https://journeynorth.org/monarchs/news/fall-2018/083018-monarch-butterfly-roosts-reveal-migration-pathways

We need to protect and save these and other insects to save ourselves.

https://journeynorth.org/tm/monarch/Populations_EastWest.html



I did my little part with raising a 3rd instar caterpillar through to chrysalis and release this past late summer. I have a potted swamp milkweed that I bought last year and overwintered and that is where I found it. I actually bought some seeds of other types of milkweeds that I wanted to try this coming spring/summer and plan to start them this winter (some by the end of this month).

One of the issues that I read so much about as I was raising my single (eventually confirmed female) monarch, was the OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha) parasite that apparently is rampant in places like Florida and probably California. It seems much of the spread of this parasite is because of the use (or overuse) of tropical milkweed, which normally wouldn't die down or get chopped back, and so the parasite spreads from plant to plant, butterfly to butterfly, and into the eggs and/or larvae.

I'm in SoCal and for years had Monarchs on my milkweed. I even set up a bug dorm (a screen tent) to put the caterpillars into so they could make their chrysalis safely and then released once they came out. I have photos of like 25 hanging inside the tent one season. Then about 3 years ago I realized there were less and less caterpillars around, eventually discovered they were being parasitized by Tachinid flies. These evil things lay eggs on the cats and then basically eat them from the inside out. Gross! I still tried to get the cats into the tent as small as i could find them, and a few made it to be released. But many still had the T flies inside them and died. This past year has been the worst, just a couple of cats early last winter but nothing since. It's devastating to see this happening. From what I have read on the Monarch related sites, there is nothing you can do about these flies.

So, in addition to habitat loss, which is probably the biggest issue, their predators and diseases are wiping them out as well.

Had to but them in the webbed tenting (got on Amazon) very early.

But I had two earlier batches, one in the Spring and one in August

We rescued the first batch from FIL's pollinator garden when we saw the T flies (plural) start to do their dirty work.

We brought one caterpillar and five instars home to raise in a butterfly tent and fed them leaves from our swamp milkweed in the back.

By the time they were released we started finding more instars and caterpillars on our bush. We raised most of them in our two tents to improve their chances of survival. It is a thrilling experience and I wish everybody could take it up and help save our Monarchs.