The Monarch butterfly population is in serious danger and could be placed on the Endangered Species List. Several Midwestern states, including Iowa, are stepping up to prevent this pollinator species from going extinct.
Chuck Gipp serves as director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Gipp says Iowa farmers and private landowners face serious implications, if the United States Fish and Wildlife Service places Monarch butterflies on the Endangered Species List.
?If a species goes on the Endangered Species List, then it becomes mitigation,? Gipp said. ?For example, if a blade of grass was the host plant for something on the Endangered Species List, that means you have to provide a similar type of habitat.?
The Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium recently pledged to establish 127 to 188 million new milkweeds stems by 2038, providing between 480,000 to 830,000 acres of monarch habitat.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship reports the Consortium?s goal is included in the Mid-America Monarch Conservation Strategy draft, released by the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. The draft describes how states in the monarch?s northern breeding grounds will collectively establish 1.3 billion new milkweed stems over the next 20 years. Gipp says Iowa needs to double its current butterfly habitat.
?Because we are right dead in the center, we know we?re going to have huge competition from crop production. ?Each of the states were determined through right-of-ways, land currently managed by public agencies, in addition to poor quality land private landowners operate. Whether it?s that bitty corner of the field you?re not making money on in traditional crop production, you might be better off converting that to pollinator habitat,? Gipp said.
The Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium asks landowners to convert marginal land into monarch habitat. Gipp says Iowa can help increase the Monarch butterfly population by converting poor quality lands into something more meaningful.
?The goal is to improve habitat so we can get an increasing population rather than a decreasing population of the Monarch butterflies. It?s important that we got this broad coalition together to provide, in each of their own venues, habitat necessary for increasing the population, and therefore, avoiding the list,? Gipp said.
