MJV is pleased to welcome a new ally, The Monarch Alliance (TMA). While TMA began as a Maryland-based group in Washington County, it has expanded its reach into the eastern panhandle of West Virginia by partnering with the regional Audubon society. The main activities of TMA involve educating the public on the monarch life cycle, the threats to its spectacular migration, and how the public can help by planting native habitats and engaging in citizen science. One of the primary focuses of TMA is to engage students; there is already interest in forming a Junior Monarch Alliance! It is important to us to partner with local leaders who have regional expertise and can help share the monarch conservation message.
TMA is working to strengthen the monarch network in Maryland and West Virginia by partnering with the City of Hagerstown on the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge, through the installation of a Monarch Waystation (pictured above), conducting a butterfly and plant ID workshop, and putting on a spring milkweed sale and monarch tagging events at a new city park. They also host Monarch Discovery Days events in early September to celebrate the peak monarch migration in the area, hold monarch tagging events at the Antietam National Battlefield and the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center (NCTC), and conduct extensive outreach both online and through presentations, booths, and other events.
In order to achieve their mission of supporting the monarch migration through education and outreach, TMA continues to build and maintain various partnerships locally. For example, they have a close relationship with Discovery Station, the local children’s science museum in Hagerstown, MD, which will be installing a monarch exhibit to further engage area youth. This winter, TMA and the museum will plan a program built around the Monarch Larva Monitoring Program, which they hope will lead to getting children to the field to monitor milkweed next summer. They also work closely with the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s NCTC, the Washington County Master Gardeners, and the City of Hagerstown Parks and Recreation Department. Building these relationships has been key to TMA’s success.
TMA feels strongly about youth education to inspire a life-long commitment to conservation. Monarch butterflies are a tool for educators in fostering a long-standing relationship with conservation and serve as the flagship species for building knowledge about pollinators. Instilling this connection early in life will ensure that younger generations are ready to take the baton and continue to tackle the challenge of sustaining habitat for our nation’s wildlife. MJV looks to local groups like The Monarch Alliance to help strengthen the monarch conservation community on a much finer scale and we’re excited to add them as a new partner.
Learn more about the Monarch Alliance here.
The Monarch Joint Venture is a national partnership of federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academic programs working together to conserve the monarch butterfly migration. The content in this article does not necessarily reflect the positions of all Monarch Joint Venture partners. Header photo provided by The Monarch Alliance.