Brian Laird on WNYC, and after a lot of heavy stuff on this September 11th,

let's end the show today with one of our periodic looks at the ways, even in a metropolitan, a major metropolitan area like this one, with all the people and cars and buildings, we urban dwellers intersect with the natural world in unexpected ways, like the world of monarch butterflies, those visually striking orange and black beauties that you may have

noticed passed through here this time of year. It turns out they're in trouble, so much so that

the Biden administration proposed designating them as a threatened species under the Endangered

Species Act. But Benji Jones, a senior environmental correspondent at Vox, reports that New York City is doing

its part to feed and shelter them in small ways that can add up. And this is one place that any one of

the tiny garden plot can make a difference. So listen up if you have one. He's here to tell us more

about the butterfly, it's mind-blowing migration, and how city and suburb dwellers

can help it on its way.

Hey, Benji Jones.

Welcome to WNYC.

Hey, Brian.

Thanks for having me and letting me talk about bugs.

Could you, yeah,

and not the usual kinds of bugs we talk about.

Could you start with the thing about monarchs

that brings them to this area every year?

They're crazy migration. Yeah. So usually when we think about or when I think about animals migrating,

I'm thinking about birds or caribou or whales, big creatures, but monarchs too have these

incredible migration, some of the most incredible

migrations in the animal world. And you'll see that across much of the U.S., especially east

of the Rocky Mountains, the monarchs that are summering there migrate in the fall down to

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