LACEY, Wash. – If you’ve ever watched the process of a caterpillar becoming a vividly colorful Monarch butterfly, you probably have an appreciation for a challenge being issued by the National Pollinator Garden Network.
The Million Pollinator Garden Challenge calls on everyone from horticulture professionals to schoolchildren and volunteers to help create and register one million pollinator gardens by the end of this year.
Pollinator declines in recent decades have been extreme, and Mary Phillips with the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program says Monarch populations have plummeted 90 percent in the last 20 years.
“Monarchs are something people identify,” she says. “It’s an iconic butterfly that many of us have experienced in our childhood. So that’s been an amazing motivator to get people to focus and engage around the pollinator issue.”
The pollinator garden at Thurston County Fairground is one of the dozens of sites in Washington state joining in to encourage people from all walks of life to create their own pollinator gardens. Pesticides and habitat loss are among the causes of pollinator declines.
Phillips notes that a Cornell study found one-third of all the food we eat is the direct result of pollinators.
She says the Garden for Wildlife program helps not only wildlife but also gives people a daily connection to the natural world, whether they create a garden in the city or the country.
“It’s very small to very big,” she adds. “Some of these are creating tremendous acres of habitat and others are kind of connecting corridors across urban settings. So, both of those approaches are equally valuable.”
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge participants can learn more and register their pollinator gardens online, plus they can take a look at the Challenge Map.
Eric Tegethoff
Eric Tegethoff is a journalist covering the Northwest. Eric has worked as a reporter for KBOO, XRAY FM, and Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland, Oregon, as well as other print and digital news media. In 2012, Eric traveled to North Dakota to write about the Bakken region oil boom. He's also worked at a movie theater, as a campaign canvasser and quality assurance at a milk packaging factory. Eric is originally from Orlando, Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida in 2010.
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