The Butterfly Milkweed Effect (Little Green Notebook)

High School students restoring monarch butterfly habitat and my faith

One day last week, Joe suggested we alter our routine from our daily Kiesel Park dog walk and try one of the Creekline Trails in Opelika. Oh, what a glorious morning we had as a result of this small change.

Creekline Trails is a citizen-led project to develop a series of creekside paths and nature trails to benefit humans, critters, and the environment alike. We found the Pepperell Branch Trailhead on the south side of Waverly Parkway just off 280 easily; it’s well marked. I’ve visited Wood Duck Nature Preserve just across the highway before, but this trail was new to me.

The dogs were most interested in the novelty of this new wonderland. They scampered on the boulders and snuffled in the sand along the creek. Joe and I watched children splashing in the water, always a joy, and remarked that this will be fun outing with the grandchildren when they visit.

Soon, we came upon a group of youngsters working along the trailside. They shoveled, picked rocks, and hoed dirt beneath a summering sun.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, always a Nosy Nellie under the auspices of being a writer.

“These are Opelika High School students,” answered a young woman who might have been one of the students herself but was actually a teacher sponsor of OHS’s Philanthropy Club. Caylie Caufield explained to me that for three weeks during their summer break, these students work with various non-profit organizations while learning the ins and outs of philanthropic work.

Today, students were paired with Keep Opelika Beautiful. Priscilla Blythe, Executive Director of KOB, leaned on a shovel and explained that Opelika’s Mayor, Gary Fuller, has signed the National Wildlife Federation’s Mayors’ Monarch Pledge, which commits to create habitat for monarchs and other pollinators, and to educate citizens on how they can make a difference in the preservation of these stunning, and declining, butterflies. Of note, I wandered over to the website to discover that Opelika is the only city in Alabama with a current Mayors’ Monarch Pledge.

“These students are planting butterfly milkweed, the only plant monarch butterfly larvae eat,” Blythe said.

Chances are you know a little something about monarch butterflies, including their great migrations across the continental United States every summer and fall. I was startled to learn that the butterflies who fly south have a lifespan of eight to nine months, and that the very individuals who survive this trek are the ones who begin migrating northward in the spring. Bless them! What an arduous and exhausting life they lead!

These north-bound, long-lived butterflies reach our parts, the southern United States, in early spring, searching for butterfly milkweed on which to lay their eggs. Their journey north depends on this one host plant for success. After laying eggs, this generation’s work is finally done, and their life cycle is complete.

Assuming no one comes along and sprays weed killer or mows down their milkweed, the newly hatched summer monarchs’ lifespans are a mere three to five weeks long. It takes several generations to complete the northward trip.

Both migrations are wrought with peril, from vehicles to pesticides to predators to climate change to lack of butterfly milkweed. In the 1990s, nearly 700 million monarchs migrated over the eastern half of the continent. Since then, the monarchs who winter in central Mexico, the ones who later arrive in our state searching for butterfly milkweed, have declined by over eighty percent.

I watched the youngsters working out there in the heat, their labor providing a necessary nursery for these butterflies to survive, with confidence that their efforts matter. Even if this newly created rest stop supports just one solitary butterfly, that butterfly will lay hundreds of eggs, with exponential potential.

It’s not just butterflies. These kids have worked with organizations like the Big House Foundation, Storybook Farms, the Lee County Literacy Coalition, and so many more.

“I would characterize this group of students as very conscientious of how they can have the greatest impact both as individuals and as a group,” said Samantha Shipman, also a teacher sponsor of the Philanthropic Club.

Well, doesn’t this fly in the face of all the ugly news spreading across our country lately? In the face of negativity, optimism is the ultimate resistance. Color me optimistic, thanks to the kids these days.

Tomorrow, the students of the Philanthropic Club will have a luncheon at the Opelika Public Library where each student will announce which non-profit they will donate to and share what the program has meant to them. “While all of the students make a financial contribution at the end of the program, what they’ve really learned is that everyone can give back to their community,” said Caufield.

Who knows what lives will be affected by their decisions, and the lives beyond those lives? Who knows how tremendous the effects of a day planting butterfly milkweed might be?

Cheers to the students who give their time to work towards a better community, and to the adults who steer them. I trust that the ripples of your work will spread far.