BC helps with Monarch initiative

With the reduction in the Monarch butterfly population this past year, the call was let out that Ohio needed common milkweed seed pods to help with the Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative project.

By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com

With the reduction in the Monarch butterfly population this past year, the call was let out that Ohio needed common milkweed seed pods to help with the Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative project.

Buckeye Central Middle School answered that call and became the Crawford County drop off point for the project. Starting in early October and running through Nov. 3, the Buckeye Central Middle School collected one large bag for the pods. The Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative will supply the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) with seeds to be spread along 19,000 miles of right-of-way in an effort to boost Monarch populations by providing the necessary food source.

Buckeye Central seventh and eighth grade science teacher Marianne Williamson noted that the school will keep a few of the seeds in an attempt to help the students understand ecology, life cycles, and resources.

“I think we are going to keep a few of the pods and try to do some of our own stratification and get a little patch of Common Milkweed growing out in our bioswale, which is where we have a number of regular swamp milkweed that we use to raise and harvest Monarch larvae. The students use those to study lifecycles, and relationships in ecology, and bioswale atmosphere biotic, and abiotic resources, and things like that.”

Williamson explained how the students came about the Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative.

“We normally have about 50-75 Monarchs that we raise every fall, and this year we had too many issues with weeds out front. So the milkweed that we normally use was mowed off to make the property look better,” Williamson said. “Then that became my classroom’s problem-based learning project. So we needed to develop a project the needs of the district, and its aesthetic value, but also accommodate the students’ learning.

“So my eighth graders took on the project, and they are developing a new landscape design for our bioswale, which filters the runoff water from the property,” Williamson added. “And so they have talked with a landscaper, we have done a lot of research on what kinds of plants will grow in the environment that we have there, and by next fall we should be ready with a new semi-professional design to have a Monarch waystation.”

For more information, please visit the Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative’s website at http://www.ophi.info/.