Help the ALS purchase milkweed plants to restore habitat for the disappearing migratory monarch butterfly with students from P.S.47!
Leader
Cathy Sohn
Location
Cross Bay Boulevard Broad Channel, NY 11693
Do you want to help restore New York City’s milkweed habitat for one of America’s best known insect? The monarch butterfly’s amazing yearly migration to Mexico has been called a wonder of nature. Once numbering in the tens of millions, the monarch’s numbers have been severely reduced due to habitat loss in North America. Their life cycle depends on one family of plants – the milkweeds. Adult females will only lay their eggs on species of milkweed and the plant has been decimated due to current farming practices, development of open fields and genetic alteration of crops. By planting milkweeds in open fields, vacant lots and along their summer breeding and migratory route, we hope to offset some of this loss and help restore this magnificent pollinator to more sustainable populations.
With help from students from our local Broad Channel, Queens middle school, P.S. 47, we need you to help us raise $1500 to purchase milkweed plants and do our first planting by the end of April 2014, in honor of Earth Day! With your support, we hope to be able to purchase enough milkweed plants to perform additional plantings throughout the summer. Operation Milkweed: Save the Monarch will be rolled out to community gardens and public spaces throughout New York and New Jersey if our program is a success!
As a coastal conservation non-profit founded in 1961, we have spent many years working to protect and preserve our coastal shorelines and wildlife habitat through our programs in education, community engagement, advocacy and habitat restoration.
Almost a year and a half ago, our neighborhood in Broad Channel, Queens (a sliver of an island in the heart of Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a unit of Gateway National Recreation Area) was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. We experienced six feet of flooding, an experience shared by our neighbors, students, schools and local businesses.
Helping to rebuild and restore our community and natural environment is high on our priority list and we are fortunate to reside and work in the heart of Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a jewel in the crown of NYC’s ecological resources with more than 13,000 acres of water, salt marsh, meadowland, beaches, dunes and upland buffer woodlands. Over 330 species of birds have been recorded here, as we are along the Atlantic Flyway, along with over 70 species of butterflies and 107 species of finfish.
Everyone loves butterflies and in particular the monarch butterfly. Through Operation Milkweed: Save the Monarch, we hope to restore their habitat with the help of our local schoolchildren and encourage others to take action and join us in future plantings!