by Birgitt Evans, Master Gardeners of Alameda County Class of 1999
Many of us awoke this winter to the devastating news that only 28,429 monarchs were counted this winter in their overwintering colonies along the coast of California, down from approximately 4.5 million butterflies in the 1980s and a historic population of about 10 million. So here it is: extinction on our doorstep.
It may well be too late to save the Western Monarch Migration, the threshold below which the population cannot sustain itself may have been reached. But I have seven flats of native milkweed seedlings on my porch, part of a large-scale planting effort by the Master Gardeners at the Lake Merritt Trials Garden; my declaration that we are not going down without a fight.
Read the original article on the Master Gardeners of Alameda County website here.