Making the Bay Club into a Monarch Butterfly Waystation
The Bay Club recently began a new initiative in our continuing efforts to help the local monarch butterfly population.
Each fall, millions of monarchs migrate over 2,500 miles from Canada and the northern US to the mountains in Central Mexico. But every year, fewer make the migration. Not because its an arduous trip, but simply because monarchs experience more and more difficulty in finding their required habitat in preparing for their long journey.
What is increasingly lacking in the monarchs’ summer breeding grounds is milkweed. Stands of milkweed provide:
- Nectar for adult monarchs
- The only place the mother monarch will lay her eggs
- The sole food source for the developing monarch caterpillar
With this in mind, our Golf Course Maintenance team has worked hard to protect the stands of milkweed on the course; mowing it only where it directly impedes golf.
The wooden, hutch-like structures constructed and placed on the property will house and provide protection for monarch eggs so they can safely mature into butterflies. A group of Bay Club members, loosely named Monarch Protect, will:
- Identify eggs on milk weed leaves on the course
- Bring the leaves on their stems, each in its own water jar and place into the structures
- Tend the stems while the eggs hatch and the caterpillars mature into butterflies
- Tag and release each butterfly to begin its long migration.
The tags are part of a program developed by the national organization Monarch Watch; monarchwatch.org. The goal is for the group to tag 100 butterflies by mid-September and if any of them are recovered in the Mexican mountains, Monarch Watch will be notified, and the Bay Club will be listed in their list of recoveries.
As the only Audubon International Silver Certified Sanctuary in Massachusetts, The Bay Club is pleased to provide the resources these creatures need to survive, and hopes to continue increasing the monarch numbers in the years to come.
