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Butterfly Garden

The Agricultural Campus grounds staff have joined forces with the Friends of the Gardens to create a butterfly meadow on campus. The half acre site, located South and Southwest of the Haley Institute, will be managed for the creation of butterfly habitat. The existing turf will be allowed to grow naturally long, and the wildflowers already present in the lawn will be encouraged. Additional perennial flowers and shrubs (which provide the nectar and foliage needed by the butterflies and their larvae) will be added into the meadow. Mown paths are already in place to allow nature watchers to wander through the meadow. An interpretation board with information on local butterfly species will be added in future, and will include a recording site for enthusiasts to note their observations.

"The opportunity for research associated with this new garden is very exciting - little work has actually been done on native butterflies" said Bernard Jackson, an internationally known butterfly expert who recently published a book on butterflies and butterfly gardening. "There is little documentation on what plants they prefer for feeding or colour attraction. There's a great deal we can learn here."

The butterfly meadow will not only provide an attraction and research opportunity, it will demonstrate what is possible in urban fringe gardens for wildlife. With the trend towards ecological consideration in urban development, the meadow could prove to be a useful model for industrial park or school ground landscapes.

"This is exactly what we talk to Environmental Horticulture students about" confirmed Carol Goodwin, Faculty of Agriculture, Environmental Sciences department. "Providing for wildlife doesn't always involve large tracts of land - the average homeowner can make a real difference".

A number of native plants important for our butterfly species have been added to the meadow, including Queen Anne's lace, yarrow, asters, goldenrod and clovers. Exotic species, including Buddleia, Lilac, Monarda, Nepeta, and Evening Primrose have been introduced into the meadow for larval and adult food sources. Stones are placed to provide sunning sites.

A walk through the meadow is exciting on a warm summer day. The range of meadow flora attracts a number of species, and larva can be seen feeding on their host plants. Host plants are grown relatively close to the paths to provide easy viewing of the 'not so pretty' life stage. As the plants grow and expand, we hope to see even more activity of both butterflies and those who love to watch them. Leave your net at home, and come for a walk!

Driving The Trans Canada Highway From St. John's To Victoria

The Trans-Canada Highway is perhaps the only physical link that connects Canadians from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It didn't come about easily, and now it's taken for granted. What makes it special? Mark Richardson is driving its 7,700 kilometres this month to find out.

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TCH - NewfoundlandIllustration by Molly Margaret

Of moose, a monument and a devastated port town: Driving the Trans-Canada Highway in Newfoundland

There's no sign to mark the easternmost point of the Trans-Canada Highway in Newfoundland. Downtown St. John's used to have the Mile One Centre, an arena near where the original highway began at city hall, but it's now called the Mary Brown's Centre. Then there's the Terry Fox monument, a beautiful, introspective statue of the inspirational runner. It's at the spot beside the harbour where Fox dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean in 1980 and began his Marathon of Hope to fund cancer research, but he wasn't near Canada's national highway.

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TCH - MaritimesMolly Margaret/The Globe and Mail

A bridge, a ferry and a dot-matrix printer: Driving the Trans-Canada Highway through the Maritimes

The Trans-Canada Highway follows two routes through the Maritimes. One travels across the southern part of Prince Edward Island and connects to the mainland by a long bridge to New Brunswick at one end and a ferry to Nova Scotia at the other. The second part, on the mainland, links Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and carries on all the way to British Columbia.

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TCH - Full IllustrationMolly Margaret/The Globe and Mail

Canada's national highway didn't come easy – it took some daredevils and squabbling to make it happen

There are few physical symbols of our country's unity greater than the Trans-Canada Highway. It's more than 7,700 kilometres of asphalt that links every province to each other. Like Canada itself, it's always beautiful, sometimes dramatic and occasionally tragic. It's more than just a road – it's Canada's connector. Today, I hope to finally reach the western end of the highway in Victoria, after driving from St. John's since early June. It has been a simple road trip. I didn't even need a map. I just followed the signs for the Trans-Canada and headed toward the sunset.

Open this photo in gallery:Construction, make-work projects and the bright side to the dark side: Driving the Trans-Canada Highway in Quebec and Ontario

Quebec seems to be the province of road works. There's been major construction on the Trans-Canada Highway for more than two decades, on the section that runs between the St. Lawrence River and New Brunswick. This seems fitting. Quebec was the last province to sign on to the federal government's dream of building the cross-country highway in 1960, and it was among the last to complete it.

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Illustration by Molly MargaretMolly Margaret/The Globe and Mail

A peculiar town and remembering tragedy: Driving the Trans-Canada Highway through the Prairies

There's a peculiar town in Saskatchewan named Ernfold. In fact, it's barely a town, with a population of 18 people and many of its wooden buildings now decrepit and unsafe. It is unique, however, because it lies, quite literally, between the lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway.

SAVING THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY

Monarch butterflies are as American as apple pie, having once been found in backyards across the country. Generations of schoolchildren have reared monarchs in classrooms, watching in wonder as striped caterpillars transform into large orange-and-black adult butterflies. The monarch's multigenerational migration is legendary — a journey of more than 2,000 miles from Mexico to Canada, undertaken by animals weighing less than a single gram.

In monarchs' overwintering groves, there were once so many butterflies that the sound of their wings was described as a rippling stream or a summer rain. Early newspaper descriptions described branches breaking under the weight of so many butterflies and depicted the masses of monarchs as "the personification of happiness."

BACKGROUND

Monarchs play a unique and prominent role in the imagination of our country, especially considering they're insects. These creatures are ambassadors of nature in people's gardens and symbols of summertime outdoors.

Yet these butterflies, once a familiar sight, are plummeting toward extinction due to landscape-scale threats from pesticides, development and climate change. That's why the Center is working hard to win them protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Monarchs have declined 85% in two decades. The western population — which overwinters in California as part of its international migration — has suffered a heartbreaking 99% decline. Overall the migrating populations are less than half the size they need to be to avoid extinction.

Monarchs are threatened by pesticides — including toxic neonicotinoids and herbicides, which are killing off the milkweed plants they need to survive — as well as urban development and climate change.

OUR CAMPAIGN

We took our first big action for monarchs in August 2014, when the Center and allies petitioned to protect monarchs as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. That December the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service declared the species may warrant protection, triggering an official review of the butterfly's status that, by law, was required to be completed within 12 months. Since by March 2016 the Service still hadn't issued a final decision, the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit, which resulted in a legal settlement requiring the agency to decide on protection.

Unfortunately the Service's decision, finally announced in December 2020, was that monarchs' protection was "warranted but precluded" — meaning that although its scientists found that they needed Endangered Species Act protection, that protection was being postposed indefinitely, with no safeguards for the species in the meantime.

And this beautiful butterfly is still declining. With the monarch population well below the threshold at which government scientists predict the migration could collapse, in March 2020 the Center and more than 100 other groups called on Congress to significantly increase funding to $100 million per year to help conserve monarch butterflies and their habitat.

Monarchs' decline is a harbinger of widespread environmental change. The plummeting population of this familiar butterfly, along with the decline of many other butterflies and bees, threatens the wellbeing of people as well, because the food security of humans is dependent on the ecological services that pollinators provide.  History shows a tragic record of the unexpected decline of abundant and widespread species. Complacency and false-positive assumptions about the resiliency of once-common species can have tragic consequences when we don't take timely action to safeguard their populations.

The Center is also working hard to save monarchs (and all other native pollinators) from pesticides like glyphosate and dicamba through our Environmental Health program.

Check out our press releases to learn more about the Center's actions for monarch butterflies.

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