GUELPH/ERAMOSA – While 2024 has been a historically bad year for monarch butterflies, some locals remain committed to protecting those able to visit their gardens.
Successfully releasing over 100 monarchs into the wild since 2019, Everton resident Susan Johnson is one of several people across Wellington County using their backyards to participate in individual, small-scale monarch butterfly rescue and conservation efforts.
“The more I studied them, the more amazing I found them,” said Johnson, who was introduced to monarch conservation efforts by a friend in 2019 and has never looked back.
Intentionally growing two kinds of common milkweed in her garden, Johnson's efforts consist of searching for and harvesting monarch eggs and caterpillars from the underside of leaves about twice a day from May until late September/early October.
When she finds a caterpillar, Johnson moves it to a protected mesh container on her back porch where she feeds it, watches it and waits for the inevitable transformation into a butterfly, which is then released.
If an egg is discovered, the process is similar except Johnson will sterilize it and the leaf with a diluted bleach solution to help prevent the transfer of diseases like ophryocytis elektroscirrha (O.E), which she has lost butterflies to in the past.
“Only one in 100 butterflies eggs laid survive to maturity so they only have a one per cent chance,” said Johnson. “So if I can get an egg, sterilize it and the leaf and bring it to maturity and release it, then that one butterfly has a 100 per cent chance of survival.”
Keeping track of her annual efforts in an online document nicknamed the Monarch Diaries, Johnson said the amount of monarch eggs and caterpillars she’s been able to rescue this year has been “minuscule” compared to previous years, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying.
So far in 2024, Johnson has rescued eight caterpillars, three of which have formed chrysalis. For comparison, Johnson rescued 74 butterflies with six casualties in 2021, her top collection year.
But this isn't an irregular finding for 2024 said Ryan Norris, an ecologist specializing in butterflies and migratory birds at the University of Guelph.
According to Norris, it's been a bad year for monarchs after a rough overwintering season led to low numbers in Mexico, carried over to this year's breeding season.
Despite the low numbers, Norris said “every little bit helps” when it comes to monarch conservation efforts and the best way for people living in southern Ontario to help with monarch conservation efforts is to naturalize their gardens by planting native wildlife, different kinds of milkweed and lots of wildflowers.
“If everybody naturalizes their garden, we would have an enormous bank of habitat for monarchs, other butterflies and pollinators,” said Norris. “It would be revolutionary.”
Beyond their environmental impact, Johnson said she continues to be inspired by the countless emotional encounters involving monarchs she and others have experienced and believes her efforts to help people love the butterflies also help make a difference.
In 2022, a resident at Hospice Wellington named Jenny devoted herself to one of Johnson's malformed butterflies before she died and inspired the creation of the pollinator garden, also known as Jenny's Garden.
“The damn things are magic, they really are,” said Johnson. “I wondered briefly once if they weren’t called monarchs, if they were called the mustard-coloured moth or something would they be so special? And yes of course they would.”
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
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