During the summer, Everton resident Susan Johnson regularly visits her backyard to check on the milkweed plants growing in her garden.
Milkweed plants are the sole host plant for monarch caterpillars. They provide the food the monarch needs to develop into an adult butterfly. Without this food, the monarch cannot complete its life cycle, and their populations decline.
2024 is shaping up to be a particularly challenging year for monarch butterflies due to warmer than normal temperatures, drought, and El Niño. Johnson is using his backyard to help save and protect monarch butterflies.
“They are extraordinary creatures,” Johnson said.
Twice a day from May to the end of September, Johnson looks under leaves to collect monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars.
When Johnson comes across a caterpillar, he carefully carries it to a secure mesh container on his back porch, where he feeds it, closely monitoring its progress until it inevitably transforms into a butterfly, which he then releases.
If she finds an egg, she does the same. Before placing it in the container, however, Johnson sterilizes both the egg and the leaf it rests on with a dilute bleach solution to prevent the spread of Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), a virulent parasite that infects monarch butterflies.
“If I can find an egg, I will keep it separate from the caterpillars so that the caterpillar, if infected with the OE virus, cannot infect the egg,” Johnson said.
Johnson currently cares for nine butterflies and has released one. That’s a huge difference from the 74 she released in 2020, her best year, but that hasn’t stopped her from continuing her rescue efforts.
“The numbers are coming down rapidly but it’s incredibly important that we do this,” Johnson said.
Raised to the status of an endangered species
In December 2023, these iconic orange-and-black insects were officially moved from a species of special concern to a threatened species list under the federal Endangered Species Act due to their rapidly declining population.
The monarch butterfly’s decline is being blamed on three different countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — according to Stephen Murphy, a professor in the Department of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo.
Murphy said monarch butterflies are very sensitive to small changes in weather, which is why extreme weather events in Texas, including an ice storm and heat wave, as well as the El Niño phenomenon in Mexico, which brought more cold and precipitation to the region, contributed to this year’s population decline.
“Historically speaking, any time there’s a little bit of a pattern change where at some key point in their development it gets too cold, or too warm, or too rainy, or something like that, the animals suffer,” Murphy said.
Murphy said that despite small-scale efforts, Johnson’s environmental efforts are preventing the problem from getting worse and every little bit helps.
“We have some kind of ability to actually connect with nature. And that really makes a difference in terms of actually making sure we don’t make the problem worse,” Murphy said.
According to Ontario Nature, there are several ways people can help monarchs. One of the best things to do is to provide them with food by planting milkweed so they can lay eggs and native wildflowers, since adult butterflies rely on them for nectar.
