At the Cincinnati Nature Center, patches of native plants are the setting for a sort-of scavenger hunt. Research ecologist Tess Mulrey stops at each milkweed plant she sees.
“Each individual plant is kind of searched from top to bottom,” she said, thumbing through the milkweed plant’s leaves.
Mulrey is looking for the beginnings of butterflies. Whether it’s a small striped caterpillar or a tiny translucent butterfly egg, she will mark down what she finds and send the numbers to a national conservation group.
This milkweed patch, and others like it across the state, are an important part of monarch butterflies' multigenerational trek from the eastern U.S. all the way down to Mexico. Many of the millions of orange-winged beauties stop in Ohio.
A proposed change to state law could aid them on their travels.
Hard to find
On this August afternoon, the nature center’s director of conservation Cory Christopher searches the milkweed alongside Mulrey. He said larvae sightings are rarer these days. The monarch butterfly population has plummeted by 80% in the last two decades.
“And so finding monarchs, even larvae, is a bigger deal than it was even five years ago,” Christopher said.
Loss of habitat is largely to blame, Christopher said. Monarch butterflies rely on Ohio’s five different species of milkweed. They provide the metamorphosed butterflies with food and a place to lay their eggs. Plus, it’s the only plant that the caterpillars will feed on.
But, despite milkweed’s critical part in a monarch’s life cycle, John Blakeman, secretary of the Ohio Prairie Association said the native plants get a bad rap.
“The problem is, milkweeds are, as the name says, weeds,” Blakeman said. “So they're being mowed down. They're being poisoned off. And there are far, far fewer milkweeds than ever there were before.”
Potential solution
Blakeman has been working for decades to reverse milkweed and other native plants’ decline. That has meant collecting their seeds, planting them elsewhere and, occasionally, passing them along to his neighbors.
“But, that’s all illegal,” Blakeman said.
An old state law requires all seeds go through a certification process before they can be shared, sold or donated – even homegrown milkweed pods.
Blakeman said while that law is crucial for maintaining quality commercial seeds, it can hurt conservation efforts. Ohioans aren’t allowed to pick up wild seeds, like milkweed, from the woods and plant it in their backyard.
“That's what we prairie planting people were doing: we were violating that law. And, we were subject to the penalties of a $250 fine or 30 days in jail because our seeds were not certified,” he said.
Although the law largely isn’t being enforced, Blakeman wants to see it off the books entirely.
He helped draft a bill that would allow native plant seeds to be shared for conservation purposes. That could help make milkweed – and the monarch butterflies that rely on it – more plentiful across the state.
“It will entice people to more effectively collect milkweed pods and transfer them and share them,” he said.
A place for pollinators
Back at the Nature Center, the search for caterpillars continues.
“Have you found any Cory?” Mulrey called over her shoulder as she finished examining a milkweed plant.
“Nothing,” Christopher called back.
As he looked, Cory Christopher said Ohio’s current seed sharing law acts as a deterrent to helping monarchs.
“It really limits what your average homeowner, who may not have a lot of money to afford purchasing native seeds,” Christopher said. “When you have those kinds of relationships formed between neighbors where they're swapping seeds, it's gonna help increase the abundance of native plants and native habitat.”
Which means the proposed bill won’t just help butterflies.
“They represent all pollinators. They represent all these insect species, all these bird species that need native plants. And you have this monarch, as I see it, as like the mascot,” Christopher said.
Everyone can understand the beauty of monarchs – even state legislators, who unanimously passed the bill in the House. The measure will need to do the same in the Senate before being signed into law.
